Jason Dilworth
Richmond, VA/Salt Lake City, UT / Student
SERVICE ENGINE SOON
If you have ever walked through a parking lot I know you’ve walked by my car. My car isn’t flashy, it is simple and unassuming with four doors and a few dents. On the freeway it wouldn’t be rememberable either. This is why I bought the car, I needed a car and wanted something reliable, quiet, and cheap. The brown 2000 Nissan Altima fit the description. At seven years old the car has only become more unassuming, minus an irritating squeak and rattle that comes from the hubcaps (three of them, I’m missing one). It is from inside this car that I’d like to tell you about some of my favorite musical experience of the last year.
With the heater and windshield wipers set to the highest settings there is a lot of added noise to overcome. During the earliest part of 2007 the Nissan and I would make a one hour trek up the Canyons of Utah towards Park City Utah—I wasn’t one of the lucky ones who’d be making the same commute for recreation—my purpose work. Still I enjoyed the drive as much as possible it did give me time to listen to complete albums each morning and then unwind from work with the soothing sounds of Amy Goodman and Democracy Now. One day with the snow flakes piling up on the windshield faster than the wipers could clear them off I remember feeling a strange claustrophobia as the number and size of SUVs appeared to be multiplying and growing in size at an ever increasing rate, it was in this moment when I first heard Andrew Bird’s song “Scythian Empires(1).” That day I decided I needed to do my part and find work closer to where I was living.
Even though love my car, we have an understanding relationship where it knows I love walking and riding my bike much more. Because of this relationship the stereo and speakers in my car are and will remain factory. During the summer of 2005 I went through a phase of hating air conditioning so I drove around everywhere with the windows down. This meant that I was constantly turning up the volume, eventually I guess I ruined them because they don’t handle bass anymore. In addition to having faulty speakers my CD player is extremely temperamental sometimes it will play a CD other times it reads ERR then ejects the disk. An annoyance I’ve learned to remedy by: turning the CD a quarter of the way, blowing on it, crossing my fingers, saying a small silent prayer, trying reverse psychology, repeating the above steps, finally giving up, then trying it “one last time.” The remedy usually works, sometimes. However, once the player recognizes a CD it will play it indefinitely, this means I leave it in as long as possible.
Late in the summer I loaded up my trusty Nissan filling up every compartment with my belongings in preparation for moving to Virginia for graduate school. With stacks of CDs and an Ipod FM transmitter I was all set to break loose and hit the open road. I had 2.2 days of music on my Ipod and was excited to not have to hear the same song twice, as I drove from Utah to Virginia. The Ipod never left the bag it was packed in, instead one CD compilation provided the background music to the 3,000 miles of travel. On that CD: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah(2), Band of Horses(3), Sunset Rubdown(4), The Fiery Furnaces(5), Bright Eyes(6), Beirut(7), Modest Mouse(8), TV on the Radio(9), and Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin(10). With the songs playing the entire time as I drove through Colorado, Through the corn fields of the Mid West, as I became lost in Kentucky, and finally as I pulled up to the Watermelon festival in Richmond, Virginia. I never tired of the songs. I didn’t realize it then but those were the artist that ultimately defined 2007 for both me and my little unassuming Nissan Altima—all thanks to the temperamental player.