I Hear The Bells

I HEAR THE BELLS, MIKE DOUGHTY

(August 2005)

The summer after I graduated from UCLA: I was living with my best friend Scott in this amazingly beautiful apartment that neither of us could afford in West LA, a blue eighteen unit complex on Rochester. I was kinda unemployed - I was still working at the UCLA Store, but since I had already graduated, I only had until December to work there. And I was absolutely obsessed with Veronica Mars.

Sadly (or not, depending on how you look at it), that show has become a defining theme of that pot-scented, mindless, money-draining, post-college year. I mean, really, Scott and I would get high and wander the backstreets in our neighborhood, and I marveled at the neon lights glowing from these other apartment buildings, and I felt like I was in the seedy world of that show, and I loved it. I also even tried replicating that in my bedroom - I bought a string of blue Christmas lights at the Target on Washington near Sony Studios in Culver City and hung them up in my room to have on while I slept. (The truth is, that plan never fully came to fruition: I only hung about half of the lights, the other half remaining in a clump near my bed - it probably was a combination of my trademark laziness (the entire year that we lived there, I don't think I ever fully unpacked) and the pot, which made me even lazier... the irony is that I wanted that cool blue light in my room so that I could have it on while getting high and listening to electropop on my virus-and-gnome-infested computer). And part of my entire wanting to live inside the world of Veronica Mars meant downloading the soundtrack album and listening to it non-stop.

"I Hear the Bells" is track 2. When I downloaded it and listened to it, I didn't remember hearing it on the show by that point, but I enjoyed it. It didn't make its debut on the show until close to the end of the second season, during Veronica and Logan's "epic" conversation during the alterna-prom (in a theme reminiscent with that TV season, Veronica Mars shared a lot of music with Grey's Anatomy, and "I Hear the Bells" made its debut on that show in the middle of season 2 when George has his first solo surgery while stuck in an elevator with a dying patient... the song didn't have as much impact in that scene).

I really dug Doughty's raspy voice, and for some reason, there were lines that spoke to me and will forever encapsulate that time period: "I'm seeking girls in sales and marketing / Let's go make out up in the balcony." While I was unemployed for a majority of that year, that didn't mean that I wasn't actively looking for work. I was bounced around from temp agency to temp agency, and the one I had the longest relationship with was Apple One, and their office was in Torrance, which was a long ways away from West LA. I mean, in terms of miles, it's not necessarily far, but try driving down the 405 in the middle of the day. Yeah, hours. Hours! Anyway, as an entry-level applicant, I only really had retail or admin experience (like everyone else in the world), so I figured that if I wanted to admin anywhere, it had to be someplace interesting where I wouldn't want to stab myself or go jerk off in the bathroom out of boredom. So, I said on all my applications and resume that I wanted a job in sales or marketing. What a random pairing to be mentioned in this song I was listening to a lot of. The making out line, well... I always want to make out with someone, and having graduated college with my first major relationship under my belt (no pun intended), well, I wanted to continue on that road.

The most vivid memory I have of the song is listening to it in Casey (my wonderful car) while driving back from another failed appointment at Apple One in Torrance. It was around 2:30 in the afternoon, hence heavy traffic on the 405 North. The weather was weird: it was kinda cloudy and dark, definitely about to rain (which, I don't recall if it actually did). I was stressed out, probably smoking a cigarette since I'd learned at that time that smoking actually calmed down my LA-acquired road rage, and I remember listening to the song, stuck on the freeway, closer to Torrance than not (I hadn't gotten to the airport yet), and feeling a bit calmer. For whatever reason, I listened to the song on loop a few times, definitely chilling me out, preparing me for another night of staying in, getting high, watching TV, and hoping that my life would start the next day.