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I take the album from its paper sleeve which I had pulled from the cardboard sleeve in which it rested. The vinyl is forty-seven years old. I set it on the platter, switch the turntable on, and brush it. The amp hums. I swing the tonearm over the record and lower the lever. (My fingers were never steady enough to lower the needle on their own and now I'm even less steady.) Crackles pop in the speakers, then Neil Young sings about packing it in, buying a pick-up, and taking it down to L.A.

Across the room I sit at an HP laptop reading work emails going back and forth between a couple of the directors. I signed onto the job thinking I'd just write grants, but it has turned into something more interesting because I want it that way and the people who hired me encourage such things. It's a sweet thing. About as sweet as Neil's voice out on the weekend.

My daughter is teaching me about sustainability. Because of her I've committed to never drinking out of a single-use water bottle again. Small steps.

Records are sustainable. I can feel it. The paper sleeve. The brushing. The crackles and pops. Sure, vinyl is pretty nasty petroleum stuff, but it's forty-seven years old and I'll keep it the rest of my days (having learned the mistake of ditching the albums from my childhood).

The job feels sustainable too. My old one was like sitting in a running car in a closed garage. I wrote a note this morning to an old colleagues. I keep wanting to break a window, open the door, something before he suffocates. That's how it was with me. And the effects of that linger. That place was poison to me. I'm only now just beginning to recover.

Over coffee I read Neil Young's Lonely Quest To Save Music and his idea that the compressed digital music is doing something bad to our brains, kind of like the mind-suck of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and whatever else feels necessary but disconnects us. That ain't sustainable either.

The record's almost over. Even that can't go on and on. But there's the other side and there's another record and another after that. Just the feel of the record, the act of putting it on, and the restorative sound flowing across the room, yeah, it's enough to sustain me. It all feels so good.

“Out of the blue and into the black
You pay for this, but they give you that
And once you’re gone, you can’t come back
When you’re out of the blue and into the black”

— Neil Young, "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)"

I got to thinking this morning of Neil Young, a guy whose music I usually like but with whom I often disagree. I remember when he put out a super-duper digital music player and I thought, no way is that going to sell. It didn't. And he wrote this book that felt like the whining of a child or the grumblings of an old man. Still, he's Neil Young and has made incredible music, done good charity work, and been working at a high level for longer than I've been alive, so I should cut him some slack and have some respect.

Still, this morning, getting in my car I got to thinking, "Neil's wrong." This was occasioned by the sight of rust weeping from under my driver's side door.

My car, bought new in 2005, has 170,000 miles on it. We have been through a lot including one serious crash. Each morning, despite all the years, all those miles, and that crash, I open the door, climb inside, and my car starts on the first try. It gets me where I need to go. I like that and I'm sad to see the rust, know the exhaust system is dying, and feel it is passing the point of diminishing returns.

It was raining this morning when I went out to the car. I opened the door and rusted brown water dripped from the rusting sill. I heard a voice sing, "it's better to burn out than it is to rust" and thought, "shut up, Neil." The rain and the rust had me a little pissy. I was thinking about Dad too. "And once you're gone you can never come back." God damn it, Neil.

Driving to work, I thought over those two songs that I file as one: "Out Of The Blue And Into The Black." I didn't remember all the lyrics, but felt like arguing with him anyway. I wanted him to be wrong so maybe the I could be right. I remembered the album title: Rust Never Sleeps which I changed to Rust Never Stops. And rust always wins, Neil.

Looking at the lyrics now, printed on clean white paper, out of the rain, I don't see much to argue in them, but I'm fighting what's happening to my car, what happened to Dad, what's developing in me. "There's more to the picture than meets the eye." I'm pretty sure Neil knew that rock and roll can and will die. Everything does. And even if he didn't know then, he knows it now. We're all forty years closer to death than when he sang his way out of the blue and into the black. After forty years, the rust is undeniable.

Did Dad burn out or fade away? Did he just rust? Is he out of the blue and into the black? Can he never come back? Is he forgotten?

I'm not expecting answers. I sure as hell don't expect to hear answers from Neil Young. Or my car. Or Dad. I'm no longer in the mood to argue or fight. I'm just humming along with the song in my head. A memory or maybe an expectation. It goes like this:

My my, hey hey and hey hey, my my. And goes on from there to wherever.