About

During the fall of 2001, my wife and I were in the backseat of a blue ‘80s-era Dodge caravan. We were being driven through the dying streets of Lake Andes, South Dakota by Tracy’s cousins Troy and Travis Nelsen, who were up front. We were in Lake Andes for the funeral of their grandfather and on the way to the VFW for beers and local color.

On the stereo of the dusty caravan was something I had never heard before – music that hit me like a jar of cold water. It was a bootlegged copy of Wilco’s fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

I honestly can’t remember what tracks I heard that day, or if “I am Trying to Break Your Heart” was even one of them – chances are, it wasn’t. What I do know is that the album stunned me in a way that no album had before, or has since.

After that initial echo of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, I followed the trials and tribulations surrounding the album, and attempted to listen to it on the web, an experience that was never gratifying. Finally, the album was released the following spring, and I could have those amazing towers in my hands.

Listening to the album, pressed in petroleum, through my old-school hi-fi headphones, I was suddenly struck by the first lines Jeff Tweedy utters: “I am an American aquarium drinker, I assassin on the avenue.” Somehow, through all those web streams the line had gone unnoticed. I skipped back and listened again, “I am an American aquarium drinker, I assassin on the avenue,” and then let the rest of the album wash over me.

Over the years, that line – or at least the first half of it – has become an ethos. I have tried, and mostly failed, to live as an American aquarium drinker – drinking in as much knowledge, art, and experience life has to offer. As I get older and my responsibilities greater, sticking with this ethos has become – somewhat paradoxically – even more elusive. The immediate concerns of work and family, immensely satisfying in their own right, collude to usurp my ability to look through the glass of the aquarium, let alone drink it in.

Aquariumdrinker.com is an attempt to articulate and maintain the aquarium drinker ethos. It is an attempt to build some momentum, and provide some reflection on what I’m seeing, doing, learning, finding interesting, and maddening. As I hope the name implies (at least after reading this essay) you’ll find a little bit of everything here – from tech, to the environment, soccer analysis, to short stories and creative writing. There’s likely to even be some personal experience stuff, but hopefully nothing vapid.

The plan is to update the site enough posts to keep the momentum going, but not so many as to become banal.

If anyone reads it, I hope they enjoy it.

–davidconnell