What I'm Listening To, 2025.4.7

A ritual for ghosts

I was at a conference this week. It wasn’t “for work” but it wasn’t not for work either. I had to preface my talk with saying that I don’t speak for my employer. My talk was dull. It boiled down to “everyone is scared about different things and we’re all bad about being scared about the right things”. A more interesting talk was by Alexis Elder about grief and the nascent use of AIs trained on the dead. It was a much more even-handed view on the topic than I expected. Central to her talk was the intimate connection between rituals and grief.

Her talk got me thinking about ghosts. Specifically, how scared I am to write about the ghosts of the people I’ve lost. I’ve realized that it’s because I’m worried about getting it wrong. That, in writing about my own grief or even just my own story with the dead, I’ll defame by omission or fault of memory.

One of my little rituals is that every few months I drink one too many whiskeys and I listen to a bunch of music that summons up ghosts. Songs that meant something to them in life or that get to the core of something we shared. I can’t say I recommend it, but one doesn’t really recommend rituals anyway.

My father was always quick to point out that he liked “Western” music, but not “Country”. It was a critical distinction for him, even if it was never quite clear to the rest of us. I doubt he could define the difference, but he knew it when he heard it. I still have all of his old Sons of the Pioneers and Marty Robbins records. He was not a talented singer, but I remember with fondness him singing “Riders in the Sky” or “Red River Valley” to me when I was little.

I always got the sense that music wasn’t about the music for him, but about the myth. He listened to it conjure up a certain mood or to evoke (perhaps invoke) a certain spirit. He had different music for driving our rattletrap RV through endless miles of empty desert and for hot, boring summer afternoons. At some point the family all got tape players and headphones. Eventually CD players got good enough antiskip that they could stand up to the complete lack of suspension in our family vehicles. On roadtrips we disappeared into hermetic musical worlds of our own.

Dad didn’t seem to mind this turn into our own private musical bubbles. He listened to music less as he got older but would still break out into tuneless song once in awhile.

I don’t know if I ever listened to Leonard Cohen with Bruce. It wasn’t really his style. We argued ad nauseum about the merits of Earth, Wind, and Fire; Tower of Power, and which Steely Dan song was the best. (He was my brother and I loved him, but his assertion that it’s “Babylon Sisters” is, frankly, laughable.)

The strange logic that dictates the co-optation of art into our souls has dictated that this song will always evoke Bruce’s ghost for me. The quietly haunting guitar was everything he had no patience for in music. He disliked sad songs and ballads, both playing and listening to them. The biographical details make no sense for Bruce except, of course, for the central question. It’s a testament to Cohen’s storytelling that, even if we know the answer (“no”), it still feels alive and hopeful.

I found a recording of a Bruce playing a few years ago. He was drumming for a band composed of his students at the local community college. I may have met some of them at his funeral. It was a ritual that didn’t mean anything to me at the time. (Bruce was, as he insisted on phrasing it, Born Again.) I remember being happy and surprised at how many of his students packed the seats. I don’t remember anything about the praise band that played.

I wish I could have played this song for Rocky. I know she would have loved it, even though it’s not something she could dance to. I fool myself into thinking that I know which lines she would liked the best, and which we would each say reminded us of the other.

Of course, maybe it’s just the apocalyptic nature of it that draws me into thinking that way. She and I always in and out of each other’s lives for over 20 years. The three-body-problem logic of our lives made these swings unpredictable, but I always assumed they’d continue, no matter how erratic. One or the other of us would come back with a bird in our teeth and a text “hey i’m going to be in town”.

But, of course “you had to go, I know I know I know.”

Rocky would have liked the turn. She would have liked the restless energy and the break into a driving crescendo to a screaming finale. She would have understood “to float around and ghost my friends” both as self-accusation and as a charge playfully leveled at me. We would have listened to it exactly twice and then she would have asked me to put on something she could dance to.

I need to learn to not fear writing about ghosts. They will be with me until I become a ghost myself. I’ll probably fuck it up from time to time. I will have many more chances when I do. I know that I will do this ritual again and again. Until the end.