February 18th, 2011.

It’s neat to be in a town consumed by slightly underground music. I wake up to a household literally buzzing over their breakfast cereal about the early release of the Radiohead album today, quickly being downloaded before my playwright friends race to Chicago for theatre and seeing The Dismemberment Plan. I go down to the local coffeeshop, Donkey Coffee, where I attended the open mic last night, and where I will play Saturday. They are spinning Neko Case while a drawing is going on for Pete Yorn tickets.

And unlike your typical open mic, when there was a cover last night, it was not Dave Matthews, Incubus, or Oasis … it was a ukulele version of Outcast’s “I’m Sorry Miss Jackson,” or obscure Fleetwood Mac, The Shins, Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me,” Fiona Apple I’d never heard, a cowboy ballad and “There is a Light That Never Goes Out” by The Smiths. And a girl named Hannah did hula hoop. I scramble for my camera … and the battery is nowhere to be found in my bag (So there may not be pictures. It either fell out in my trunk, or it’s on my shelf at home).

I managed to play the open mic last night, which apparently is signed up for a week in advance. That is something I’ve not encountered before. I knew the “now for something completely different,” blunt instrument gadget that is “Love A Girl Gone” would not work for this indie music crowd. So I did “Message in a Bottle” and my murder ballad, “Sad Little Bells.” I met Jake Loew (go tohttp://www.myspace.com/jakeloew and listen to “Rhubarb”), one of the other artists on the bill Saturday, who did exquisite and unexpected instrumentals on uke. My friend, Ira, graded his students’ midterms about “Doubt,” while we shot knowing glances at each other whenever a song we liked was played, or when someone introduced a song as a Wu Tang Clan cover when it turned out to be a song about Jesus.

Yes, there is a certain artistic pretention to the town. Here is Ohio University, founded in 1804, the oldest university in Ohio – ninth oldest public university in the United States. But it’s also a strange clash of hipster and Midwestern meathead. I left the open mic that was raising money for a women’s shelter, where you could have dropped a pin, and went into the streets of Athens at midnight. The drunken girls in too-high heels leaned heavily on boys as they navigated the late-night sidewalks outside the overflowing bars, as an acoustic musician could be heard doing the exact cover of “Hey-Ya” I’ve heard a thousand times before.

I fall, as usual, somewhere off to one side of center. I could never be the drunken girl, and I’ll never be the effortlessly hip. And I like popular music, but I also like to hear something that truly moves me. So Athens, a town my friend says is the smallest he could possibly stand to live in, has about everything I need. Except for like … a sandwich to eat while I am on the internet having my coffee. So I’m snacking excruciatingly slowly on a spinach feta roll at about a quarter inch an hour.

I can make a home for myself almost anywhere. Speaking of popular music, I think of John Mayer’s line: “free to roam/made a home/out of everywhere I’ve been.” I don’t mind the long drives. I have music, and it truly keeps me company on those straight roads across whole states. I sing to myself, and I do not feel lonely … much. Last night as the sun set ahead of me, I gasped at the moon in my rearview, so large it seemed a planet I was barely outrunning … and there’s no one to tell or point it out to. Is it full? No one to ask. When I arrive, I look it up;  It will actually be full tonight.