Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops

listening to Alan Licht while reading The Exorcist

Fall entered the small wood paneled room. Rain pounded the roof, a guitar strummed, repeatedly, until the same chord started to bend and warp and contort itself in a hundred different ways, stretching itself out, like tentacles, enveloping the room in its sameness.

While I have the license to do so, I’ll also place a few candles in this scene, I might as well set the mood. We could add a fireplace, maybe even some blankets. This is the scene of a room I saw from the road — driving slow through a post rain mist. The room looked comfortable. I wondered who lived there, and If anyone had looked into my living room longingly, like I had just done for a passing moment. We humans, we want what we don’t have. Even in the greatest of times.

I have been listening to the new Alan Licht record Havens, all week. It has been a welcome companion for me on short drives, while I write emails — and even while I read The Exorcist by William Paul Beatty.

It brings me a certain kind of solace — you know, the contemplative kind, usually reserved for the time of year where nature starts showing off it’s beautiful death march.

This house at night brings me somewhere, I am not sure where exactly — but it feels like, oddly enough, home.

Havens is a beautiful new record from Alan Licht. I was lucky enough to have this cross my desk earlier this week, courtesy of the Deep Voices newsletter written by, Matthew Schnipper. Since Matthew is a real writer, a conjurer of feeling through the written word, I can leave this part up to him, in describing Licht:

“It’s almost like when you see a guy take out a guitar at a house party and he plays the worst bullshit. I think this is what he actually thinks he sounds like. Graceful and interesting against all odds.”

I am thankful for folks like Matthew who can crystallize a feeling and give words to middling emotions. You know, not the love or the hate, but all of the stuff in between. it is where we all live. They are our home.