A Car Window View of Lando Manning

sound-to-story synesthesia

***this is part of my sound-to-story synesthesia where I write quirky stories about what I see/feel while listening to music and their melodies—a fun mashup of the creative worlds. bon appetite

Lando Manning will make it. I’m calling my shot. I don’t know to what extent, but after hearing his first two songs, I am confident his music will pour his coffee with whatever milk he wants. Time and luck will tell if he’ll be able to afford anything beyond the working-class vices.

This isn’t a label or claim I slap on without intent or force. My smug moments are rare. So when these aloof lips find their way into a smirk, I can’t ignore it. It happened with the Toyota Previa. Leaning way too far back in my chair, I pointed with my chin and said have a look. That’ll be something someday. And people laughed. But look closely now because the moment is here. The real trendsetters, the grit miners, are starting to drive the pug-ugly Toyota Previa (pictured below).

The Previa drives my Lando Manning synesthesia well. When I listen to his song, Lately Lover, the window rolls down (manually) and my elbow hangs out in the below-the-speed-limit air and I taste exhaust leaks. Through the blown-out speakers, I hear callouses in Lando’s strumming hand and laboring rust flaking away in his voice and I nod my head at the passing pedestrians.

Lando’s music is a cigarette on a lunch break, a pat on the back for all of the coming tomorrows. There’s an understanding there, not a pitiful one, just a “yeah, I know. Now take this.”

This understanding really starts to vibrate into one of my lapses in sanity when I listen to his song, Today. In its droning melody and vocals, I am dragged through the unescapable slow momentum of the song. The drag isn’t something you want to escape. It’s rather comforting with its hues of empathy. So I don’t fight the slow pull. I accept. And I accept, as I listen on, the scene that starts to percolate:

There’s our Previa. It’s packed with boxes. A family is moving away. They are pulling out of the driveway, and in the backseat, a kid stares through the window, looking at his childhood home. He keeps watching it as they drive further away and as his world, the place where he imagined his entire life would be, dissapears into the distance.

And all in the span of the song, the kid grows into adulthood. But that tug away from his childhood expectations still pulls on him. Through his commute and through his work, he’s dragged further and further away from his childlike sense of what he thought his life would be. In place of the magic, the pirate ships, the adventure, he has tasks: insurance to choose, teeth to clean, vacuums to buy. And each thing only drags him further away from his expectations. He does nothing. He smokes. And he accepts, letting the distant ache smolder on.

A large part of my Previa-esque belief in Lando Manning comes from the fact that his music has told me a story. I have no idea if it was the story he intended to tell, but therein lies the beauty of art. If you’d like to learn more about Lando’s music and the stories he has to tell, you can subscribe to his substack.