Henry Rollins: The Column! Henry Reminisces About The Ice Cream Shop Where He Used To Work

By Henry Rollins Thu., Oct. 13 2011 at 5:00 AM

[Look for your weekly fix from the one and only Henry Rollins right here on West Coast Sound every Thursday, and come back tomorrow for the awesomely annotated playlist for his Saturday KCRW broadcast.]

I have many traditions and rituals. None of them is based in reality, but none of them is based in superstition. Many of them are based in music. All I can say is Fanatic is as Fanatic does. There are certain records that I put away after a certain time of the year and don't take out again until the right season is upon us. There are records that I play only after the sun has gone down, and records that cannot be played until the weekend.

Unfortunately for the sane people reading this, I have the same fixation with literature. Here is an example: Every October, for well over a decade now, I read out loud from Thomas Wolfe's Of Time and the River, specifically "Book 3: Telemachus." Wolfe's protagonist, Eugene Gant, returns home in October to Asheville, N.C., after receiving the news that his father is dying. It is very beautiful and powerful stuff. The book is based in truth, with Gant being Wolfe. I have stood a few times in the room where Wolfe's father passed away. Seek this writing out if you can.

One of my favorite rituals is to spend at least 24 hours in Washington, D.C., in October. It's my hometown and favorite month of the year, after all. This week, I have a presentation at the National Geographic Theater. I will be narrating a slide show of photographs I have taken from all over the world. As I prep for that, I have a few days here in Washington.

The weather has been great so far -- cool, dry, crisp. The nights were made for walking. I tracked about three hours last night. Most of my destinations were music-related.

I walked by the apartment where I lived as a very young boy. That's where, thanks to my mother, I first heard Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Doors, the Rolling Stones, Isaac Hayes and many others.

It was in this apartment that I first became a music nut, spending hours alone in my small room at the back, listening to records over and over again. This was the late 1960s and things were racially tense in the city and it was hard to escape bad experiences. I had more than a few, which in retrospect were good for me. They politicized me at an early age and made me hypersensitive to racism. The room and the music were good escapes.

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Coelacanth Fanatic

Ms. Vasquez:

I really enjoyed reading Henry's article and then reading your thoughtful response, specifically the part about the power of listening to music and what it does to us. Personally, I've felt this when listening to songs I wrote and recorded many years ago as well as listening to music I did not make that I haven't heard in years.

I love to walk, too, with my dog; but I don't usually listen to music on those walks because I like to hear the noise of nature. I live in one of the oldest neighborhoods in town and can easily walk to 1 wilderness arroyo park, 3 city parks, a major university, a dog-friendly coffehouse, and a dog-friendly restaurant. The longest I've ever walked was 43 miles in the desert because the car broke down. I've never done a 5k run. Wow!

Please keep those thought provoking posts a-comin'. Thanks! ---the coelacanth_fan

Jennie Vasquez

I would hope that this article helps all of us take a walk down our own memory lane and think about the music that has influenced us. So many of our lives events have songs that capture the time perfectly in our minds and every time we hear a particular song, the memories come flooding back like it was yesterday.

Music can serve so many purposes in our lives if we let it and you don't have to be a music expert to appreciate it. I know nothing about music other than if I like it, I listen. Music helps us remember the past, helps us get through the day, and helps us prepare for the future. How many of us can look back at a tragic or difficult situation in our past that we thought we could never get over and have a song or two that we related to at the time. A song that seemed to know exactly how you felt. It is a pretty powerful feeling when you hear one of those old songs and realize that with time you learned to cope with whatever occurred. The music helped you heal. Music can also make present day tolerable. Even the most mundane task is made easier with music. I know when I jog if I have music the time flies. If I don't a 5k feels like a marathon. As for the future, it's always fun seeing what new trends come into play and how music will be influenced by up and coming artists. I would go as far as to say that music can also help people heal so they have a future. I think of our military personnel that have been injured either physically, mentally, or both and wonder how many of them are hanging on and dreaming of a future because music helps them learn to carry on or to help work through what they need to in order to learn to cope with the horrors they have experienced. There are so many ways that music can touch our lives if we let it.

On a different note but related to the article, I would encourage people to always try to see places on foot. Start with your own neighborhood if you never go for walks and you'll see things you never noticed before.

Great article!