Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Twists and Turns of Life

It’s funny how this happens.

When I went for my first interview at Great Big Pictures in Madison, WI a few years ago, Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was playing in the prepress room. I knew right away that I was right where I belonged.

I was told on my first day that everyone in the office takes turns making music picks, all day long. There were only a few rules: 1) DJ (my boss) owned the rights to the volume (and he used this right quite often) 2) the record couldn’t be longer than one hour (though this one was often fudged if no one objected to what was on, or if everyone just lost track— we did actually work, too), 3) it couldn’t contain any offensive language (also often fudged, as long as no clients were walking through), and 4) if someone absolutely couldn’t stand your taste in music, they had the right to skip your pick (this only happened once or twice in the two years I was there). It was a marvelous thing, listening to music at work all day. Not only did it help pass the time and break up the inevitable monotony associated with prepress work, but it exposed everyone in the office to a variety of music— some good, some bad.

One of the artists I was introduced to while at GBP was Andrew Bird. I remember liking some of it, but I was never impressed enough to choose to listen to it (though I did ask my manager, Luke, for copies of Oh! The Grandeur and The Mysterious Production of Eggs… you know, just for the collection). I don’t think I listened to them all the way through once.

If you haven’t listened to Andrew Bird, there’s really no way I could sum up his sound without making this post way longer than you care to stick around for. Just know that he’s good— really good. The point of this post is this: about six months ago, my good friend, Brent, asked me if I had heard of Andrew Bird, and told me that I needed to get his new record, Armchair Apocryhpa. I thought it was funny that Brent had heard of Andrew Bird (then I remembered it was Brent— the guy is basically a music encyclopedia). I picked up the record, and it quickly made its way into my weekly rotation in the car. I even went back and listened to The Mysterious Production of Eggs again, and truly appreciated it this time. Sometimes a record doesn’t make sense until you first hear another one by the same artist that does make sense.

It just goes to show that you never know how things will turn out. And it reminds me of Ashley. I spent four years in the same building with her, 180 days a year, in high school… even talked to her several times, coached her on the Powder Puff team, hung out in the same group a few times… and I had no idea that one day, several years later, she’d be walking down the aisle towards me in a gorgeous gown, ready to become my wife.

I think that’s what’s fun about life, and what makes it so worth living. Life really is like a box of chocolates (without that chart on the back that tells you exactly what’s inside each piece… though sometimes I do mix up the shapes and end up with some nasty fruit creme in my mouth when I was expecting caramel).

I guess that makes me Forrest Gump.

And Ashley is my Jenny