I am a music nerd. I hear a song I like, I read up about the artist, their past work, their lives. I grab their old albums and dive deep into their work, sometimes with disappointing results. There are a lot of albums out there that should have been a single or at most an EP.

But I digress.

The lyrics are the part of a song that I focus on primarily. You ever been to a concert and been stuck beside some loudmouth who bellowed along with every song? Sorry! I can’t help myself, nor do I want to stop singing along.

Back in the summer, I had the chance to see one of my current favourite bands, The National. Here’s one of my current faves:

And for the first time in possibly forever, I went with a friend who loves music as much as I do, my friend Sue.

As we sat around between opening acts and hoped that there would be food left in the food trucks for us, I discovered a shocking fact: Sue loved the music much more than the lyrics. How could this be???

I had assumed that she loved the music in the same way I did, and it blew my mind that someone could be as equally devoted to a song as I was but for a completely different reason.

Don’t get me wrong, the music part is important to me too. Otherwise, I’d be sitting around grooving to poets doing spoken word. (shudder). But I thought the lyrics were always the star for me. The bands I love (The National, The Hold Steady, The Tragically Hip as examples) are storytellers, and I am a sucker for a narrative. I chew it up and wonder how those characters got to that point (which triggers my own storytelling gland).

Imagine my surprise when I discovered songs that I loved despite not being able to sing along with them. Both songs are by Greg Dulli, from two different bands that he helmed.

Song #1:Crazy

There’s something about this song that activates the primal part of my animal brain. It floods me with imaginary memories of that pure and joyful lust that comes at the first blush of infatuation. No guilt or doubt, just two people starving for each other.

Song #2: Teenage Wristband

This one has some sense of romance to it, but it asks more questions that it answers. It makes me think of two people driving around in the lost hours of the night. A pause before whatever happens next, good or bad. Delaying the inevitable next step forward.

And as much as I love both of these songs, singing along with them doesn’t give me the same thrill as shouting along to my other favourites. These two songs skip the verbal part of my brain and go straight to the emotional section, and that is a mildly unsettling experience for me. I am all about words, words, words.

I’m not trying to use Orwellian doublespeak on you, I promise. I have to tell you about my toilet troubles.

Wait, where are you going? Why are you running away with a disgusted look on your—oh, I get it. I just said that sentence out loud. No, this won’t be a story about bodily functions. My toilet tank got a crack and a leak.

And after an unsuccessful attempt to cheaply patch it with silicone goop, I escalated the repair process. Time to replace the tank!

You may not have delved into the exciting world of uncertainty that is household repairs, so let me tell you it is maddening. I live in a 50 year old town house. It is made almost entirely of poured concrete, so you can’t move pipes or drains. My toilets are also 50 years old, and are special models to accommodate the aforementioned drain restrictions. Is it easy to find a replacement tank for a specialty toilet from the Seventies? GOOD GOD NO.

But I thought it would be easy, so I tried it. Bought a tank, got it home, realized it wouldn’t fit, and had a little cry. Then I went back to the internet, furiously googling in search of a hail mary solution. Nothing.

So I steeled myself for an in-person interaction with a gruff plumber, and went down to the plumbing supply store. I walked in and boldly admitted that I was stumped and needed help. I had a suspicion about the answer I was going to receive, but I held out hope.

Hope denied. The gruff plumber humouring my request broke the news to me without hesitation. “You’re not gonna find a replacement tank for that” he said after taking one look at the photo of my old weird toilet. The good news is that they can order and install a new specialty toilet for me, for the heart-attack-inducing price of $1000. Thousand dollar toilet??? And it doesn’t play music or automatically bathe your nethers clean???

My inclination is to put this in the ‘loss’ column and feel bad about failing, but I am attempting to adjust my perspective. I put in the work, I researched, and I reached out to an expert. These are all successes.

And the end result is that I have successfully identified that this repair is outside of my ability to address. I could have chosen to avoid the expert, tried another tank that would not have fit, all the while wasting time and money. Instead, I will mark this as a victory, congratulate myself for an exemplary effort, and head down to the corner to dance for nickels. Thousand dollar toilets don’t pay for themselves.