Cassie recommends “anything” by Adrianne Lenker
Hanging your jeans with a clothespin / skin still wet, still on my skin / mango in your mouth, juice dripping, / shoulder of your shirtsleeve slipping
Spring of 2022. Freshly 20, admitted into university, about to move from southern to northern California. The first of my family to go to college, and the first of my friends to leave. The lyrics are on repeat, circling around, as I hang my white linen pants and blue cotton shirt in my backyard. At the moment, I am aware that it is fleeting – the romanticization of a simple chore. I think of my mother, her mother’s mother, doing this in their childhood homes.
Staring down the barrel of the hot sun / shining with the sheen of a shotgun
I think of Camus. I think of how the sun is hot, but it doesn’t lead me to act irrationally. I find peace at the moment, and somehow, nostalgia. I know I’ll miss this when it’s gone. The cactus, the bright blue swimming pool, the rose bushes. The white picnic table where I’d have tea, the chicken coop, the pomegranate tree.
Most recognize Adrianne Lenker from the band Big Thief, but her album, songs, is one of the most intimate albums ever released. The third track of the album, “anything,” released as a single, stands out. The album is forty minutes long, but when I first came across it, “anything” was on repeat for as long as it would have taken me to listen to the album twice. I was scared, Indigo, but I wanted to. How is it, that the more personal the album is, the more connected I feel to it? The answer is obvious, and I know this is because Lenker is genuine. I do not know Indigo, but listening to this song, I yearn for them too.
Months pass. I go to the record store, Amoeba on Telegraph Avenue, with my new roommate. I buy songs on vinyl, she buys Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, Big Theif's latest album, the title teased also teased in “anything,” the one that I listened to on repeat, the one I thought of when I did laundry, or ate a mango, or felt the presence of the sun. We listen in warm silence and in that same week, we hang up thick twine outside our window, on our little perch, to air dry our clothing.
My partner comes over, watches Lenker perform “anything,” and learns it for me on guitar. I feel nostalgic again. Not for the spring, in my backyard, but for that moment. I take a polaroid of him and place it on my jewelry dish. I hear the song every time I glance at the photograph.
This song has always been there. In the back of my mind, on my shelf, on my walls, on the twine, in the laundry room, in my white linen sheets, in my partner’s deep brown guitar.
anything, everywhere.
Cassie Rivera is currently in undergrad at UC Berkeley, studying English, with a minor in Spanish. She transferred from Santa Barbara City College, where her poetry was featured in their creative writing program's magazine, Open Fruit.
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