It's a faraway memory, nearly lost in the tide of zeroes and ones that shape our new digital world. Sometimes, though, I do remember the calming effect of a safe light: the soft red glow that spilled through the darkrooms of my adolescence. Years ago (decades now, I'm amazed to say), I pursued photography as a serious study. I didn't go far with it, never approached anything near a professional level, but I took it a tad farther than just a hobby. For a time. I was still in high school, and the darkroom was a comfortable place to be—hidden from sight, engaged in the act of creating something, seeing images develop from nothing. I remember the smell of chemicals, the eddy of the water bath, but most of all the light in darkness. Red is usually a stimulant—to passion, to action, to anger—and it's associated with all kinds of vice. In the darkroom, though, it was none of those things. I did not meditate when I was a teen. I had no informed opinion of meditation. Still, what I did in those hours standing in front of the enlarger, the trays of developer and fixer, was just that: meditate. My mind worked, and I observed its working, but I never over-thought anything in that space, and it was a relief to me. I remember especially being an unhappy girl on a medical leave from school, and my mother would take me to an art center in Norwalk, Connecticut, where there was a darkroom available for rent. I am not doing a very good job at identifying exactly what it was like, or really focusing on the memory. It is late now, and I need to be in a different sort of darkened room—one without light; one with only sleep. But I lost myself in that scarlet artist's space when I could, and no matter if there were others in the darkroom with me (sometimes yes, sometimes no), the safe light made me feel relaxed in a way that was like solitude. Peaceful and hypnotic.
Here is an early music memory: I am very young. If not still a toddler, then not much older. I am running around the living room, squealing with unrestrained delight, while my dad chases me to the tune of "I Am the Lion" by Neil Diamond (Ba-pa-la ding-ga!). He's reached deep down and pulled out his big baritone voice—the one he also used for "Old Man River" on occasion; the one that always awed me. It's the early 1970s, and although hopelessly pop and showy, there is no shame in liking Neil Diamond. Not at this time. Later, I'd go through nearly two decades of keeping this (admittedly) often schmaltzy artist at more than arm's length. When I bothered to remember Neil Diamond, which generally I didn't, I thought of him more like a skeleton in my musical closet; a dirty little secret that, if exposed, would set me up for some heavy razzing from friends. I don't remember when it was that I recovered my dad's Tap Root Manuscript album. It wa...
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