Dogs, Banjos, and Cake: Palliatives for a burning world | Ammi Midstokke

I keep trying to get my banjo teacher to teach me contemporary songs, because if Pink Floyd sounds good, it must sound good on the banjo, right?

It turns out, not everything is a banjo song.

Still, I am desperate for the medicine of music these days, and even more desperate to be able to make it myself. Anyone who has ever hit a note and felt it resonate through their solar plexus like Truth, understands what I mean.

I need a soundtrack to sing me through these times.

And it was given to me in the form of vinyl records with explicit instruction: Just listen to the music. Then listen to the harmony. Then listen to the melody. Were I a better student, he might suggest I try to pick out the different banjos, but we both know there are limitations in my patience and ear.

Everything in our world has become background noise, a constant drone of stimulation. The urgency of headlines. The redundant blathering of social media. The invasive dinging of text messages. The ceaseless string of folk tunes from my streaming service.

Then I canceled it (I could not reconcile the ICE ads and use of AI music), only to discover the melody of wind in the trees was far more soothing.

Even my house has its own rhythm: the much less diabolical ice-maker clinking, the water pump thumping, a cat slinking through the door. The chirp-flutter of the bird it just brought inside, trying to get back out through a window.

In the morning, I wake up and listen to what the world has to say, until I need to hear the grind-drum-pump of my espresso machine (speaking of music to my ears). And my days start better now.

This ritual is followed by a run, with a visiting dog the size of a small cow, only far dumber and less spatially aware. He crashed and bumped and toppled his way along the trail, stopping every few yards to smell flowers or be curious about a stump.

Each abrupt halt led to a biped pile up behind him, but he wasn’t bothered at all, because it is spring and there are so many, many things to smell.

His flopping, whopping rumble down the trail was a joyful reminder of all the wonder surrounding us at any given moment. I’m always just too stuck in my head – running off a meeting, running off hurt feelings, running off the systematic erasure of marginalized people, running off my helplessness.

There is a deer carcass on the edge of my property that has been the happiness and debauchery of my own dog, Freya, these last weeks.

It began with her rolling home one night, tottering in like she’d been on some drunken bender, bloated with the gluttony of her decomposing treasure find.

Then bones began appearing in the yard. The hoof of an ungulate on the patio. A knuckle and femur left outside the dog door, as if she thought better than to bring it inside (unlike the cat).

In the morning, she stands in the sunshine of the patio and raises her nose to the wind in search of the sweet decay on the breeze, just like I might stand there seeing if it will bring the scent of the dogwood blossoms my way.

She hides her bones around the corner of the house, because she knows I’ll rob her of this canine pleasure, gloved hands depositing chewed limbs into the black hole of a trash can.

She no doubt wonders how I can waste such a find.

Meanwhile, I know there’s at least a whole ribcage left out there that will appear, bone-by-bone, in my yard. And I am happy for her doggy-joy at this, even as I fret about vet bills.

When we run with our giant loping poodle-cow visitor past the place where once-deer is strewn among the undergrowth, the smell of death heavy in the brush, Freya pretends not to notice.

It’s like a teenager who pretends they’ve never seen the dent they put in your car.

Her feigned obliviousness, the human ways of my dog, make me laugh and call to her as we prance around the young lupine. Any day now, it will explode into a blanket of purple that spreads like spilled paint between the trunks of trees.

At home, dog and I thirsty, and a record spinning something playful on the stereo, I remember that I have cake in the fridge.

May is a cake-heavy month for us – three birthdays, including mine, and Mother’s Day – only one of the reasons it’s my favorite month. But also because it’s the last month I feel optimistic about my garden, all those hopeful seedlings unfurling the promise of broad leaves and sustenance. (It is a farce, but I refuse to capitulate to this reality until late July.)

Before 10 a.m., I’m on my second cup of coffee and halfway through a slice of cake, tapping my foot to the serenading song of a pair of Canadians on gourd banjos.

And for a little while, none of the other noise matters.

Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammim@spokesman.com