Spending my formative years in the Rust Belt towns of Toledo, OH and Detroit, MI, from a fairly early age I and my friends knew all about the sudden changes in fortune people could see through fluctuations in the economy. So when the Great Recession hit in 2008, it was nothing new to us in the automotive capital. It was life as usual. We continued to struggle our way through college and eventually into the cutthroat workplace.
We had found ways to allay the intensity of our daily struggles through music and other art forms. We searched back into our hometown roots and found the genius of Motown, with its solid harmonies and its smooth bass lines! It’s almost as if its predictable chord structures and its established history provided that knowing of what’s coming next that all of us needed. We incorporated this past pop flavor into our music and played our way into some interesting music festivals around the country.
In due time, though, life did catch up with us. By this point, my family had moved across the country, my friends were leaving town for bigger, cooler, more vice filled locales (with character fading quickly), and I didn’t see any reason to stay. I moved to Raleigh, NC, where I rejoined my family and found the girl I want to spend the rest of my life with.
And this is where I am. There are certain elements of the past I miss and would love to retry, but there are more elements in the present that I enjoy and want to continue. In one last attempt to somewhat immortalize (and definitely glamorize) the past, I chose to write a fictional account of our final tour (a tour that never did happen). The Listless is that story. I hope you enjoyed!
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