As Jeb Loy Nichols drops the needle on his latest record selection, time wobbles, and he’s twenty-two again.

Aaron Neville
The Greatest Love
Palm Tree
1978

These are the muddy days. The days that drift and clump around the drain of a new year. There is, in my yard, a solitary crow with a damaged wing. He hops around the place, nervous and jittery; I toss him seeds and leave bowls of water. He ignores me, as is only right. I retreat indoors and pick up a record at random. There are uneven stacks of them, surrounding the turntable. I tell myself, not for the first time, to clean things up. The record I’ve picked up is ‘The Greatest Love’ by Aaron Neville. I remember clearly the first time I ever picked it up. I was in America, visiting my father, and I’d stopped in a small junk store in Springfield Missouri. I looked through a stack of singles and found this one at the bottom. I remember looking at the label and thinking, how can this be anything other than perfect? Aaron Neville, produced by Allen Toussaint, arranged by Wardel Quezerque, written by Joe South. And I was right. It was, and still is, perfect.  The record, unlike me, remains the same.

There have been times in my life when I’ve had more hair, more friends, more money, more appointments, more stuff. Is all of life a trajectory of less? Of relinquishing? There was a time when I felt a great need to ruin my life.  This is all too much, I told myself. I felt swarmed on and beaten. I had, and have, a big human brain that makes stuff up. That convinces me of things and plays games and is depressed and worried and pleased with small pleasures. I pretend. I advance and fall back. I once wanted things I didn’t know I wanted. I still don’t know. My wants now are whittled down to include soup and tea and a comfortable chair from which to watch the declining sun. I stopped yesterday and tilted back my head; the sky was there, intact and big and startling and not at all knowable. I was dazed. I forgot, for a moment, myself. At any given moment there’s a lot going on in my head.  None of which is consistent or makes sense. But all of which is me.  

The crow (I call him Hopalong Cassidy) is sheltering beneath a laurel bush. He looks left and right, then hops forward, dragging his damaged wing. I don’t expect him to survive much longer. The cold, the rain, the foxes; things are stacked against him. I’ve offered the shelter of my house but he refuses. He hops around, surprised by his inability to fly.

I play ‘The Greatest Love’ again. Time wobbles.  I’m twenty-two. I’m far from home. I’m in Missouri with my father. We’re driving around in his truck. It’s the golden middle of summer. Then, quick as a heartbeat, I’m as I am now, an old guy on a hill. Looking out a wind slapped window. The crow hops. Rain threatens.  othing stays the same. Not even ‘The Greatest Love’. It’s a different song now than the one I heard forty years ago. A different love, a different regret. We’re all different. Me, my father, Aaron Neville, the crow, the fields that surround my house. And just like that a moment of sun comes. It falls across the fields and then across the window. The day, fleetingly, is brightened. I look for the crow and can’t find him. The day, as all days do, slips into something new.

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