August Edwards
HEARING “DRIFT AWAY” BY DOBIE GRAY
FOR THE FIRST TIME
The sky is real blue out the window. My Aunt Linda’s eyes are concealed by sunglasses, her hands on the steering wheel, her sunglasses reflecting her hands, appearing to me through the small rearview mirror. Golden-yellow corn fields. For the corn fields to be so golden, we’d’ve been well into fall. Now that I’m saying all that though, maybe I saw yellow fields for all the sunshine swathing the glossy green stalks. For all I know, it’s July.
I don’t know where we’re going and I don’t know where my mom is. It’s like, if you’re of the car-seat-sitting age, what agency do you have in goings-on anyway. The best I can do is wait. The radio is on, mostly noise to me. Until I hear it—
—and I hear Aunt Linda sing, her voice lending itself to the country sensibility of the song. Her voice is girlish, like my mom’s when she sings to me while she brushes my teeth. Fun, good—strong and sure. But Aunt Linda isn’t singing some Barney song. I can’t see her expression, but I think I recognized her happiness—what I later see as contentedness—which contrast with my feelings, which more resemble the fear of being lost in a sea of maybe-late-season corn.
My mom’s singing voice can be described as a cheery warble. She looks me in the eye as she performs, always inches away from my face. I can see all her big straight teeth when she sings because she’s smiling. And I smile back. Aren’t I sooo good at singing? she coerces me into agreeing. But Aunt Linda doesn’t have any of those self-conscious qualities. It’s like she’s forgotten I’m back here.
I could swear I wrote this before. But I can’t find proof. Now that I’m thinking about it, I think I told somebody. I think I had been thinking about how I’ve always been myself. I’d been thinking about it and, what do you know, it sprouted naturally…organically…no GMOs…I said, here’s how I think I’ve always been myself, and they said, you should write that down…but who was I talking to?
Hearing the chorus then, in the backseat, it shimmered with a clarity that I was not often privy to, at however old I was. It hit like a certain truth, like I’d been born knowing about the freedom of rock n roll my aunt was singing about, just hadn’t heard it verbalized til then. Maybe that’s it—the words came to me like I knew them long before I knew them, and in this way, I’ll never forget—
By now this memory has shifted into something life-affirming to me. I think of the song and maybe I feel what Aunt Linda did. The druggish smooth guitar riffs working on me—tethered to her voice—now when I think about it, the moment is tied with Aunt Linda showing herself to me, and I saw her the way we all wanna be seen—loosened up, unwound, practically driftin’ away.
About the writer:
AUGUST EDWARDS is an Albuquerque-based music journalist with an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She is the founder of Albuquerque Green Room, an independent publication covering the city’s local music scene, with a particular focus on heavy music. August has worked in bookselling, libraries, publishing, and higher education, and is currently developing several nonfiction projects about desert landscapes, music, and regional identity.
Image: Country Sensibility (AI-assisted digital image) by O:JA&L staff creative. 2026. Public domain via Midjourney AI.
OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprints Buttonhook Press, HOT BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Issues, and HIGH BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Art, supports writers and artists worldwide.
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