Did it go quick to get to who you are

I was followed by a coyote at 5 am, down the street from my apartment, far from the lights of the 241 pizza place that is better than it has any right to be. I saw it first in a park, far enough away that I felt a kind of temporary safety. I thought it might be a dog, maybe running loose from its yard, or being walked by an off-leash dog owner who is too busy checking their notifications to see that their dog has become feral. But I could see, through the darkness and lit by streetlights, the angular lines of its tail and head that turn dogs into coyotes. I grew up in the woods in the middle of nowhere, and who knew that would prepare me for a life of spotting wildlife a block and a half away from a discount pizza shop. I told Bowie, my dog who is not a coyote, no matter how hard you look, that we had to turn around, and the funny thing about telling a dog anything is that they don’t care, and are confused when your indecipherable language becomes panicked and hurried, as I could see the coyote had spotted us, and made for the trees that lined the street to follow us back up the road.

It’s terrifying to be stalked by a coyote because they are often hungry and desperate and the best of us are dangerous when we are both of these things. Here I wanted to take a nice walk, at 5 am which is the best time to walk a dog, and listen to music in half-dead headphones. Half-alive on my better days. I had been worried about Bowie when I got home from my trip to New York because he was tired and lackadaisical and could barely climb the stairs to our apartment. He could barely jump on the couch, which I know some people would never imagine letting their dog do, but I am not you, and you are not me. But here at 5 am with a coyote following us, he was happy and pulling on his leash and without a single care to his name. I was listening to music in half-dead headphones, desperate to just enjoy the still of the morning, with a tight grip in my chest, as each time I turned to spot the coyote I could find it in the trees along the sidewalk, watching us, and moving slowly in the same direction. Back towards the pizza place and the street, where maybe a car would scare it off, or if it was hungry enough maybe not.

5 am is the best time to listen to music, no matter the state of your headphones because you have just woken up — unless you are still awake from the 4 am before it — and everything hits harder when the day is still brand new. All your little synapses and nerves and tender things are lighting their pilot lights. I think music sounds better with specificity. Like how “Exit Music For a Film” is best while driving in the city, early evening when it’s raining, with red taillights reflecting on your face. I’m sure there’s science to this, and I’m glad for it, but really it’s entirely about vibes. People talk about vibe coding everything now, and I’m upset that vibes have been removed from their station. Vibes were meant to describe the moments you couldn’t find words for. Now vibes are misrepresented and used to describe an app that doesn’t really work when you look closely.

I’ve been listening to this album, Melodie, by Slow Pulp on all my walks in the early and later hours. I’ve tried it in the daytime, and it sounds beautiful there too, but there’s something about the dusk and the half-dark that makes the album so much more. I walked it around the neighbourhood for the first time in the early evening, where a man sat shirtless outside smoking a cigarette on his porch, who waved to me and said hello with the kind voice of a man who wants to enjoy the beautiful serenity of knowing how he might die. I miss smoking when I see someone doing it, but I can’t go back there. Sometimes I think I just miss holding death delicately in my fingers.

Genre can be a limiting idea sometimes because Melodie might be an indie pop record, but it might really be anything at all. Dream pop, or indie rock. It’s an album to listen to in headphones while you wave hello to a shirtless man smoking a cigarette when the light is low but not yet dark. When Emily Massey’s vocals arrive they are haunting and ethereal, they exist in a realm beyond but not removed from the music. The guitars that are soft and plucked until they are ready to be strummed. The opening song, “Yellow and Green” is lush and gorgeous, as it moves through a recalled memory. “Do you remember when you broke me?” Massey sings, “It was on Halloween” as we pass an inflatable witch stuck in an inflatable cauldron on a festive front yard.

There’s a kind of beauty found in mundanity, not to say dull, but rather that these are known elements. “These Days” follows with an existential wander through a city that never changes, days that feel the same. Parks and footsteps that go around again, and again, and again. All carried by a steady drum and a gently strummed guitar, paired with synths and shimmering things. The morning is made beautiful by all of this, and as it hits we reach the park, where I see the coyote that is maybe a dog. Where I tell myself it will never come towards us, until it does.

As we walk I try not to think about it. “Better Man” is a bigger song, it’s loud and bold and almost too much for the morning, but just enough for wanting to wake up a little. If the sun made music as it replaced the moon it might sound like this. Almost new wave, almost post-punk. Something built of every genre. I love the sequencing of a record like this for the early morning, that is never one mood, never too somber or reserved, that allows itself to stretch and reach and become something new at each new turn.

I wished for that man again, sitting and smoking on the patio that now sits empty, when I turned to keep an eye on the coyote trailing behind us. Still, there. Moving slow. Moving careful. Just like I had been. When I was driven by music, and not anxiety. When it didn’t yet feel necessary to be too aware of the world beyond me and Bowie and this record in my ears. “Red Car” plays in my ears and it’s almost too much. We’re walking, and the rhythm in my half-dead maybe-alive headphones is steady and buoyant. It sounds like a road trip song, it might play on a stereo in the sun while letting your arm dance on the wind as it drapes out an open window. But here in the morning it’s the sound of feet moving faster on the sidewalk. I keep turning back, and the coyote is still following us. I’ve pulled Bowie close to me, so I know where he is and if he’s scared. He’s more confused than anything. He wants to stop and sniff leaves he sniffed once already on the way down. I can see the lights of the pizza place. I can see the bus stop and let people on and off. I can see the coyote behind us. Massey is singing “so what did you get from that little red car? Did it go quick to get to who you are?” in my ears. In another life i would rather be dancing to this song, but instead I have to stop, and put my body between myself, a coyote and my dog who would much rather be idling siffing on the grass. I stand and listen to the bass and synth in my ears, a pulsing rhythm that moves in contrast to Massey’s voice. The coyote looks at me one last time, and then it grabs something on the street in it jaws and dissapears. I turn, and we walk fast until we hit the street, and even then, we don’t slow down. Bowie can see that I’m worried now. He is keeping pace, even though days before the vet told us he has arthritis now, and stairs might be hard. He is up the stairs before I am. “I can take the hit if you lead me to the route.” Massey sings, and then a tone that tells me my headphones are dying, and I turn the key to my apartment, walk in, and breathe for the first time in minutes.