A daily fiction writing exercise — one page on the first song that plays on shuffle.
“What’s crazy about the Beatles,” Greg continued, taking one of the French fries from my plate and dipping it in my mayonnaise, “is that they aren’t overrated. Isn’t that wild? They’re as acclaimed as they are, and they aren’t overrated.”
“Well sure,” I said, moving my mayo out of his reach, “But they are, like, kind of overrated.”
“Which version of the Beatles do you think are overrated? Cause even if you don’t love, say, Help or Rubber Soul, there are like ten other phases of their music to choose from. They did so much.” For punctuation, he put his Budweiser down emphatically on the table.
The conversation went on for another twenty minutes or so. I knew in theory that when he got like this, Greg wasn’t actually looking to engage in a conversation. He was looking for me to validate how smart and correct he was. Even knowing that we could change the subject sooner if I just gave him what he was looking for, and even when I didn’t care very much about the matter at hand one way or another, I never seemed to be able to get off at the nearest exit. It would frustrate me more to let him get out of the conversation feeling like a genius than to waste a half hour of my time on a conversation I found annoying.
I finally maneuvered out of it when I got him on his other favorite subject — showing off how much objectively true information he knew. Once I had him talking about liner notes and music history, there was no longer anything to argue about, and I could just space out and think about what we’d do for dinner.
Thankfully, Greg didn’t come to Saint Paul too often, and when he did it was never for very long. Usually, he’d spend the first day complaining about Mom, the second day complaining about his general grievances in life, the third day complaining about Saint Paul, and the fourth day complaining how long it would take him to get to the airport.
This time however, we learned on the second day that Canada had banned people from entering the country from the U.S., so Greg was stuck with Rowan and me, sleeping on our air mattress in the kitchen. The twenty-nine he stayed with us, we listened to an album a day. The twelve Beatles studio albums (including Magical Mystery Tour but not including Yellow Submarine), three live albums, five Paul albums, four John albums, three George albums, and one Ringo album. By the end, I genuinely agreed that the Beatles were in fact not overrated. Granted, if I’d spent a month of my life listening with enough focus to any artist or genre and discussing the music for hours on end, I may have concluded that they were among the best of all time — that’s how cognitive dissonance works, isn’t it?
Still, when he was leaving to go back to Vancouver, I was surprised to realize I was surprised to realize I was actually going to miss his being here. Rowan and I never tried to educate each other, which was probably good for our relationship, but it did leave us in a bit of an aesthetic rut.
“Send albums,” I shouted over the crowd, waving goodbye at the airport.
I couldn’t make out his reply. I think it was either Will do or Love you too.
