Make Space 41

a closed text

Listen to “Make Space 41” on Spotify

And tell a friend!

I rewatched Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy last night, a film that remains impossibly affecting. It’s a vibe. Style and content playing jazz together—what the New Critics called a “closed” text. It’s a road movie, a buddy movie, a stoner movie. It’s a movie about time and wilderness and vulnerability and masculinity and friendship. Maybe it’s one of the best about friendship. The whole thing just works. Kelly Reichardt is an American treasure.

I’d forgotten that Yo La Tengo composed the score, a series of twangy instrumentals that are just as quiet and heartbreaking as the film’s images. This week’s playlist leans quiet, too, but it’s not heartbreaking. It’s quietly groovy. Breezy. Probably a bit melancholy. In Old Joy, Kurt says that “sorrow is nothing but worn out joy”—an aphorism for these tracks.

I bought my first Yo La Tengo album, Summer Sun, on a two-week road trip down the coast of California during my sophomore year of college, my own version of a buddy-stoner-road movie. After driving through the night from Colorado, we slept (illegally) on some beach in the North Bay—Muir? Stintson?—and woke in damp sleeping bags, pre-dawn fog, the tide marching toward our feet. We spent the day wandering the city, warming up, shaking it off. By late afternoon, we were at Amoeba in the Haight, blowing what little money we had on stacks of used CDs. I bought Summer Sun and The Sea and Cake’s Oui, both albums that have become sense memories of that road trip, like eucalyptus leaves mixed with sea salt. The backseat of T’s grey Durango. J’s psychedelic dress shirts from Argentina. Highway 1. Headlamps and picnic tables and ramen. L and C and S. Time and wilderness. Friendship. Santa Cruz. Downtown LA. The Pacific. A closed text. An American treasure.

Thanks for listening.

Your bud,

Ross

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Art @ Ashley Walters