Did you listen to some Buddy Holly today? He died 50 years ago today, you know. Personally, I think the world would be a better place if everyone listened to at least one Buddy Holly song per day. This morning I awoke to a kid snoring next to me and NPR doing a story about the anniversary with snippets of Buddy’s best sprinkled throughout the story. I normally wake up Clara Jane gently, knowing how much I have always hated obnoxious wake-ups. Today, though, I couldn’t help myself. I woke her by singing along with the songs. By all accounts this should be grounds for requesting a new parent. But she woke up happy. Something about the pure joy conveyed in music made by a young Texan who died far too young a long time ago.

If this doesn’t pluck a chord in your heart, you probably don’t have one. What about this? Are you feeling it? It feels like being alive.

In honor of the day (or by sheer coincidence), I did something that made the music in my soul die a little.

That’s right. I bought tickets to see Morrissey this morning. The girl who could make a career out of making fun of Morrissey. (Invisible hoola-hoops! Morrissey’s biker gang! Quit humping those rocks! None of those lines are mine. Two were coined by Kristina and one by Beavis. Not that this stops me. The one that goes, “When he says he wants to go home, cry, and die, that’s a joke, right?” is all me.) I’m taking Kristina, who loooooves Morrissey to the show for her birthday/finishing her MLIS. I haven’t decided if part of the gift will involve me keeping my big mouth shut at the show, or laughing so hard I piss myself and get thrown out. Either way, it’ll be fun.

Speaking of concerts, I went to one on Saturday. Wanna see a bit of it?

That’s Jeff Tweedy, sans Wilco, doing a Golden Smog song in a school auditorium at University of Illinois – Champaign (or is it Urbana? Our GPS didn’t know.)

The usual particulars: Brian and I started at The Blind Pig with our pal Kim from Chicago, where we had a beer.

Or fifteen. Who’s counting? Hey – they were only six ounces each. Just enough to make us think this was the funniest thing in the world:

It’s Rob Halford’s toilet!

So yeah. There was a concert. And lots of Wilco fan-people I adore. Some damn fun, after a long, snowy week. I should be happy, right?

I fought tears through most of the show.

His acoustic version of Spiders cold-cocked me.  If you know the song, you know it’s usually a cacophony of feedback and loops and layers that can spirals into psychedelia. But this … this striped-down, bare version ripped every bit of loneliness I’ve felt over the past few months right out of my chest.

“It’s good to be alone.”

I don’t want to dictate the particulars of my life that have led me to feel this way. I’ve been feeling disconnected for quite some time. The last year was another one of those teaching years in which I’m forced to study what I need from others in my life and more importantly, from myself. I don’t miss the things I’ve ended – or have had end – I just wish it wasn’t so damn hard.

But don’t we all?

After emotionally devastating me with that song, Tweedy ended the show at the lip of the stage with no amplification, performing one of my favorite songs from his Uncle Tupelo days.

Early in the morning, sometimes late at night
Sometimes I get the feeling that everything’s alright
Early in the evening, sometimes in the day
Sometimes I get the feeling everything’s okay

So many times, I’ve found comfort in that verse, the reminder that life ebbs and flows. When it’s worse, it gets better. And then that guitar jangles, and it’s the sound of being alive. And joyful.

Everything’s okay. Not perfect. Never is. But it’s alright.

After the show I talked to Wendy, one of the people I met in Chicago last year. She’s a little older than me, and somehow we started talking about how, after a certain age, so many people stop listening to new music and we don’t understand that. “You don’t just watch movies or read books from when you were young, right? So why do that with music?” she said.

She’s right, and Don McLean was wrong. The music didn’t die on February 3, 1959.  Okay, I’m saying this at the end of a long-ass post about Jeff Tweedy, who I’ve listened to for nearly 20 years; Morrissey, whose heyday was before I was in high school; and Buddy Holly, who died six months before my dad turned 10. But as long as us old timers hang on to the good stuff and look for new stuff that’s up to the standard, it won’t. As long as we keep feeling it, and letting it move our bodies and our hearts, it’s alive.

Sometimes, it keeps us alive. Brings us back to life.

We got home on Sunday in time to catch Springsteen’s halftime show.  “Is there anybody alive out there? Is there anybody alive out there?”

Yep, there is.