Eventually, we would fold ourselves into my car and drive to an all-night donut shop on San Pablo. I hated when my friends talked over my music, and I hated it even more when Ken led them to sing-alongs, replacing the perfect harmonies of "God Only Knows" with their wounded cadences. It was my car, but it was no longer my kingdom. Sean, Ben, and King delighted in singing loudly and out of tune.
At first, perhaps it was just to annoy me, three young men singing, one begging them to stop. But then it became a noise that felt safe, possibly better than the original. In the immediacy of the song, as its seconds tick away, you're experiencing it as a community—as a vision of the world vibrating together. It tickles your ear, then the rest of you, as your voice merges with everyone else's. The violent dissonance when someone, and then another, slips off-key, and everyone ventures off toward their own ba-ba-baa solo. I finally felt in my body how music worked. A chorus of nonbelievers, channeling God. A harmonic coming together capable of overtaking lyrics about drift and catastrophe, a song as proof that people can work together. We would sit in the parking lot until the song ended. The donuts weren't very good, but at least they provided a destination for our moving choir. We were sharing something, a combination of delirium and fraternity.
Hua Hsu