When I first started at my work, I was an intern in the shipping department. We were at one end of a large building, away from the edit suites I hoped to one day work in. Our end housed an enormous tape library, a tech room full of tape decks for duplication, our shipping office and a Media Center, where duplication orders and library organization took place. On my first day, a girl there commented on the pair of Adidas Sambas I was wearing. "New shoes for a new job?", she asked. They were in fact new, though my nervousness froze me in making a friendly response. I think she thought I was weird.
Over my time there I recognized her as the person I had the most in common with. She was only a couple years older than me, and really into photography. She didn't work there very long, but after she left we kept in touch. She moved into a house with her friend in Berkley and I became friends with her and her boyfriend. When I moved to Ferndale in June of 2008, they were among few friends that I didn't (currently) work with who lived in the area. She let me borrow her digital SLR camera when I took a road trip around Michigan's thumb. We saw a few movies together, had dinner now and then and I even helped her with an art project that involved driving out to her roommate's parent's house and setting a scene in the middle of a field of her roommate wearing antlers and sitting in a pile of telephones. That day was in early Autumn, and while we were surrounded by trees of changing colors, I remember the atmosphere as being a permeating grey. This was not a depressing thing as much as it was inspiring. The Fall has always been my favorite time of year. I marveled at the elaborate concept of her project, and as we rode on her roommate's four-wheeler to where we were shooting, I was overcome with an idea for making a film whose backdrop was an October wood. The song "We're Computerizing and We Just Don't Need You Anymore" by the American Analog Set filled my head as the perfect song for an interlude scene of bare branches in the waning daylight.
A few months ago she announced that she was moving to Chicago. I hadn't seen her for some time when I went over to her house for a joint birthday party for her and her roommate in May. I recognized a few people that I had met through them before, and while I didn't stay very long I had a lot of fun and felt very welcomed in their house, a feeling I don't often get.
I knew that she was planning a going away party the week before she officially left, but a few weeks before that she invited me to see Rogue Wave at The Magic Stick. I thought she might have seen one of the two posters I have from the times I saw them at the Blind Pig back in 2005. As it turns out, we had both been fans of them for as long, unaware that the other was. We had both also disregarded their third album and had mixed feelings about their newest, Permalight. All the same, the evening made for an excellent chance for the two of us to spend time together before she moved. We had dinner at Noble Fish (we can no longer be sushi buddies!) and arrived just in time to see Javelins, who had been added as an opener after we'd decided to go (an excellent coincidence.)
Rogue Wave put on a good show. Zach seemed very smiley and into putting on an enthusiastic performance. It was inspiring to see, as I read an article recently about how he had woken up one morning unable to move, a result of slipped discs in his neck. After recovering months later, he started working on the new album which was to be upbeat and danceable: an ode to his recovery. The show was one of the few I've been to where I've felt noticeably older than almost everyone else there. We were both happy to hear them play not only "Kicking The Heart Out" from Out Of The Shadow, but five songs from Descend Like Vultures. They even played "Medicine Ball", which for a time was one of my favorite songs to put on the jukebox at The Loving Touch.
One thing her and I share is a feeling of age in our mutual want to go to sleep at an early hour. She always laughs and calls herself an old person. I try and tell her that there's nothing wrong with wanting to wake up early in the morning. It was midnight when we left The Magic Stick and I yawned the whole way home. She lamented on it being her last chance to see a concert in Detroit, but even after she moves I'll keep her friendship and take it with me to every show.
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