My Father’s Ringtone

For the entirety of my childhood, the City of Chicago sounded like one thing: Miles Davis’ “So What”. The Brown Line sounded like it. The gates of my school sounded like it. Merchant Mart sounded like it. Every place I went, I would hear the same song, without fail. Miles Davis’ “So What”. It was my father’s ringtone. He set it to play at the 1 minute and 30 second point, right at the cymbal crash and beginning of Miles’ solo. I think I could probably recite the first couple bars of that solo, note for note, to this day. My father was and is (he is alive, and well - this is not a eulogy) very good at picking up the phone, so it was unusual for me to hear more than a 16 count of that song. Listening to it now, I can confidently say I’d never heard him let it get past a 32 count. It remains one of his best qualities. He is remarkably dependable. No matter the time of day, I know if I call my father the longest I’ll ever have to wait for him to pick up is 32 counts of Miles Davis’ solo in “So What”. That’s a nice thing to depend on.

My father has amazing taste. Back then he was into trip-hop, Brazilian pop, post bop, afro/latin electronic… My first iPod had Os Mutantes, Bebel Gilberto, DJ Shadow, probably anything and everything Far Out Recordings was putting out, Bill Evans, Thievery Corporation, Quantic, Gilberto Gil… I was, thanks to him, a remarkably hip 6 year old. His curatorial instincts surrounded me, near every day. He had a woman’s clothing store off the Paulina Brown Line stop. I spent most days in the store, sound seeping into my head while I played on the computer in the back. Sometimes I mopped, or vacuumed, or picked dresses up off the ground. From time to time, tommy delight, he asked me to help him with the window displays, selecting items to place on the mannequins or decorating the platform with his collection of assorted antiques. When one CD ran out, he’d ask me to put on another. “Not that one. We’ve been playing it too much.” Out of all his CDs, I remember one striking me the most; Koop - Waltz for Koop. I felt, at 6 years old, that the thing I wanted to be most in the world was older, and that this was what being older sounded like. It sounded very mysterious. It was one of the few CDs my dad had an additional copy of in his car. We would leave his store, jump in the car, and he would ask: “can you double check I locked up?” He never, ever forgot to lock up. But I would check, and after I did, he would turn on his Honda CR-V and the CD would kick in automatically. On the ride home, while listening to the CD, I would look into people’s windows and wonder what job I would have, and what my apartment would look like, once I was older.

I got older, little by little. My taste in music diverged from my father’s, but never by much. Around 15 I remember having more emotional experiences with music of my own. Things that I was finding. I remember the first time I heard Gal Costa’s self titled album from 1969. I have not, to this day, had a more affecting, lasting experience with music, not because I have not found more affecting pieces of music since, but because I remember for the first time feeling the deepness of sound. I remember listening to that album, and feeling like I was swimming in the ocean, looking downwards and not seeing the ground. Just seeing water. I remember gaining an awareness that there were near infinite possibilities in sound for me to discover. I feel, to this day, overcome to tears listening to even a few seconds of that album.

I am much (but not that much) older now. I have a job, and an apartment. Several nights a month, I pack a bag full of music and play it, for money, which I use to pay for the apartment and more music. I cannot imagine that the 6 year old staring into people’s homes would have considered that as a career path. My father does a reasonably good job of concealing his concern for my future. He is not the gushing type, but I do think he feels pride in my career. Once it became clear I was not a very reasonable person and was likely not going to pursue a reasonable career, he seemed proud that I was able to pay my rent, and had the respect of my peers, and some larger purpose and place in the world. I imagine that when he tries to imagine what I do for work, he occasionally pictures the 6 year old picking CDs from his collection and staring into people’s windows on the ride home, wondering about their jobs and apartments. Now, I ride home from work with a bag of records, and I still stare into people’s windows, wondering what dumb job they have, and how much they’re overpaying for rent.