Sixteen Minutes in the South Section

“Oh, there’s too much terrain/I can never explain it all/It’s too much for my brain/I do what’s in front of me, what’s in front of me now.”

“In Front of Me Now”

— Nada Surf (Matthew Caws, Daniel Lorca, Ira Elliot, Louie Lino)

I drove to Laurel Hill Cemetery yesterday to lead my tour, “Heavenly Intonations: The Musical Legacy of Laurel Hill”. Along the way, I was listening to a playlist that Apple Music has generated for me, allegedly the top 100 songs I’ve listened to in 2024. I say “allegedly” because, as Robert Plant is my witness, I swear I haven’t listened to Led Zeppelin’s “Lemon Song” as much as this playlist purports that I have. It’s not even my favorite song about lemons.

As chance would have it, just as I was about to enter the Hunting Park Avenue gate to Laurel Hill, the playlist hit me with “In Front of Me Now”, a stunning song from Moon Mirror, the 2024 album by Nada Surf. Both the song and the album are very near the top of my favorites list for this year.

Matthew Caws, the singer/songwriter/guitarist who fronts Nada Surf, has observed that “In Front of Me Now” is essentially a song about multi-tasking and how to avoid it. That is a fairly straightforward idea, but there is more going on here.

“In Front of Me Now” resonates with me, because it’s not merely about being distracted. It’s about cutting out the extraneous stuff that keeps one from leading their most authentic life at any given moment.

As I get older, I find that simply trying my best to do “what’s in front of me now” is my best path to that kind of authenticity. Matthew Caws and his bandmates nail this for me in the words and music of “In Front of Me Now.” So much so, that sometimes when I hear the song I get a little overcome by the emotion it makes me feel.

“In Front of Me Now” is, as Isaac Hayes once described a certain Jimmy Webb song, a “deep tune”.

The emotion generated by this deep tune was washing over me as I drove through the cemetery gates and I decided to give in to it, to feel “what’s in front of me now”. I drove across the bridge to the south side of Laurel Hill, listening to “In Front of Me Now” several times in a row, rather loud — the permanent residents at LHC didn’t seem to mind, and no other living visitors were around. For 16 minutes I drove the curvy roads, up and down the hills, stopping frequently to park for a moment to snap a photo. Trying not to be too fussy about the photos, just capturing what was in front of me now.

The whole time I was doing this, I focused on this thought: once upon a time, the thousands of people buried and interred at Laurel Hill were going about their lives, perhaps trying to find their own ways to do what was in front of them then. Much of the time, those moments may have have been trivial, but string them together and you have entire lifetimes.

And sometimes, those moments weren’t mundane at all. William Crothers Dulles, interred in a small mausoleum, had to face what was in front of him now as the ship he was on, the Titanic, slipped under the Atlantic Ocean. How did Dulles, who did not survive, face that moment?

I can’t fully describe the effect that this journey through the south section of Laurel Hill had on me, but it was an experience, sort of mystical but grounded in the moment, that I needed. It turns out, my sojourn in the south section wasn’t the only immersive experience I had yesterday, but the others may not have happened quite the way they did, had I not given myself those 16 minutes earlier in the day.

Some people might find it odd or ironic that I visit cemeteries, particularly Laurel Hill, to reconnect with life, but it’s just how I roll. And I know I’m not the only one.

Maybe these photos, which I took between 11:52 yesterday morning and 12:08 yesterday afternoon, will express my feelings just as well as any words. Individually, these photos aren’t profound works of art, but taken collectively, they serve to remind me of 16 minutes in my life when I was fully, completely absorbed in what was in front of me now. I am profoundly grateful to have had the opportunity.