I was slurring my way through a Sunday afternoon. Silence surrounding my steps. I scrolled through my Spotify looking for a soundtrack to surprise me. That’s when I found So You’re Mad About the Cups. Sarah and the Sundays turned my sluggishness into a suave smoothness.

As this album leaked out of my speakers, I felt as though this music should be escorted by an ambiance of applause, not the cavernous quiet of my empty house.

So, I got in my car. 

I didn’t have a destination set; I just planned on driving wherever the music took me. 

“Ruby Fields” had me on Cascade Road, sparing the speed limit five miles per hour. My surroundings liquidized in my peripherals as I drove on. Fluidly and gracefully, this song wept for a setting as beautiful as it; the autumn trees seemingly did not suffice. “Ruby Fields” glittered on the street signs and shined in my rearview mirror. 

As I turned onto 28th Street, my seatbelt was the only thing restraining me from dancing in the streets as “Sweet Dream” caressed my cheek with its short melody. “Chin Up” veered me into the left lane and pedaled to the metal—legally. 

When “If You Need Me” came on, I needed a place to park, and I found refuge in a Goodwill parking lot. Tucked in between two yellow parking-lot lines, I succumbed to the intermission of a  musical road trip. Earbuds in, “Ghost” lured me in through the sliding doors of the thrift shop, but the clothing was more the background music compared to the lyrics circling my cerebrum. 

It felt oddly fitting to be looking through closet memories to the tune of “Reminiscing.” As my fingers cradled foreign fabrics, I found myself searching for material as silken and soft as the voices serenading me. It was a song that didn’t seem to have an end. Voices carried over seconds and minutes, proving that music evades time. Then suddenly, they dropped. 

“Golden” led me to the coat section as I began to test the warmth of winter jackets and the chill swishiness of windbreakers. Though nothing would live to see my closet, I still left layered in a few extra memories sprinkled with new lyrics stuck in my mind. Lyrics that I could not, would not forget.

“I’ve Followed This Street for Days” paved a path toward the pants portion of the store. Searching for corduroy, denim, and anything in between, my fingers were determining between scratchy and smooth, worn and new. I left bare of new trousers, but the catchy tunes had snuck their way into my pockets and laced themselves through my belt loops. 

“Moved On” brought me into the shirt section. As I plucked the best from their permanence on the rack, the music wove itself into the shirts and became one with the thread count. Three new shirts with one song attached to them all. 

“Playing God” pulled me out of the store and sang as the wind prickled and filtered through my hair. It followed me through the parking lot until we met inside my car. Just the two of us: alone. The song is strange. Strange-looking, strange-sounding, strange-feeling, a strange that you don’t want to leave behind. 

“The Woods” turned the key in the ignition. The song itself was a starter, a firecracker, something from which other things are born. 

“Ghost (Reprise)” paralleled the beginning of this road trip. My foot was a feather on the gas as I was ruthlessly passed driving down 28th. I let my windows fall, but the music didn’t escape my car; instead, the outside entered through the windows. A metropolitan orchestra swam through my car, but the hollow beauty of “Ghost (Reprise)” remained clear. 

I pulled into my driveway with “Growing Pains” in the passenger seat. It’s a climactic song. It’s the zenith of a moment. It’s a build-up that starts at one hundred, but it didn’t last forever.  I left my car and met the smell of the memories of music that fled through my exhaust pipe. 

So You’re Mad About the Cups was the vacation I didn’t know I needed.