Love Forever Changes
We replaced our nearly decade old desktop computer sometime in the spring of 2004 and it proved to be a pivotal moment in what would prove to be a pivotal year for me.
By that point I’d been using the internet for roughly two years. I spent most of time playing games on AOL, in chat rooms and reading about Magic:The Gathering. By 2004, I was blogging on Xanga and LiveJournal. I was still an AOL user, I played a lot of Mahjong Garden on Pogo Games while I listened to music on AOL’s online radio stations or my music library.
The new desktop meant more memory so I ripped all my CDs to MP3s and made playlists that lasted for hours. No real art to the sequencing, that would come later.
At that age I primarily listened to British Invasion bands and had yet to venture much into bands that started after the 60s.
The new computer could not only rip CDs but also burn CDs. That summer I burned a copy of Rubber Soul on it and gifted it to a classmate I had a crush on. We had several classes together, including band. Earlier that year we had been in a production of The Velveteen Rabbit. I was the lead in the play, a boy named Andrew.
I was thinking of that play recently because of a post going around social media that gained a lot of traction. It showed the before and after photos of a lamb plush toy. The photos depicted the effects of the passage of time and use of the time. “Too much love” it was captioned and another user wrote “Just the right amount :) to be loved is to be changed.
There is a similar theme in The Velveteen Rabbit. The Skin Horse, another toy, says this to the Rabbit.
“‘Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.’”
“Weeks passed, and the little Rabbit grew very old and shabby, but the Boy loved him just as much. He loved him so hard that he loved all his whiskers off, and the pink lining to his ears turned grey, and his brown spots faded. He even began to lose his shape, and he scarcely looked like a rabbit any more, except to the Boy. To him he was always beautiful, and that was all that the little Rabbit cared about. He didn’t mind how he looked to other people, because the nursery magic had made him Real, and when you are Real shabbiness doesn’t matter.”
The boy catches scarlet fever and all of his possessions must be burned to disinfect his room. The rabbit cries a real tear as it awaits its fate in the burn pile, but is spared by a fairy that transforms it into a real rabbit.
I’ve been thinking about that message a lot in relation to music. A certain song, album or band can change your world and be anchored to specific moments in your life and how others hear music, what they love and the music that they talk about can impact you as well.
I can never hear Phil Och’s “Love Me, I’m A Liberal” without thinking of my mother. Years before I knew who Phil Ochs was, she told me about a teacher she had in high school and she said he often said, “Love me, I’m a liberal.”
I assumed it was a relatively common turn of phrase. I wonder if the teacher was aware of the song or if he merely misunderstood it and used it without a hint of irony.
Director Paul Thomas Anderson screened Punch-Drunk Love for Robert Altman. He didn’t tell Altman beforehand, but the film made use of “He Needs Me,” a song written by Harry Nilsson and arranged by Van Dyke Parks.
I love that story, because it’s a very sweet gesture to a man he admired and whose work greatly influenced his own. Altman reportedly said he was glad the song was finally in a good film.
Popeye was a favorite of mine as a kid, the first Altman I ever saw. I loved it then. It wasn’t until I was older that I cared about the songs and who was involved in their making. Every contact leaves traces.
Turns out I had the groundwork laid for some of my major interests at an early age. It was always in me, I just had to chip away at the marble to reach it.
Sometimes memories associated with a song are negative. I associate several with the passing of my grandfather. He was out visiting from Idaho for my brother’s graduation from high school. He had an early flight and I drove him to the airport.
The first song I heard after dropping him off was “That Summer Feeling” by Jonathan Richman. I was the last person in my family to see him alive. He would be dead six months later.
The last song I heard before I got the news was “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus. I was at White Castle with two friends, we were grabbing a bite before seeing a movie. After getting the call, our plans changed and we went back to the dorm. I put on Neil Young’s Tonight’s The Night, because it felt like the only music that could touch on my pain. “When I picked up the telephone/And heard that he'd died out on the mainline” as the title track says and those lines stayed in my head over the next few months.
I was grading assistant for a professor who taught several courses on music history and during the class on Elvis, I thought of my grandfather because of a headline in a paper in Memphis after Elvis died: A Lonely Life Ends on Elvis Presley Boulevard.
My grandfather and grandmother were married for more than 50 years. She passed away in 2003 and he continued on for another 7 years. He was 92 when he passed. He kept an active life, but seeing his house indicated that he was lonelier than he let on.
And because of the associations with Elvis, I think of him when I hear “Went To See The Gypsy” by Bob Dylan. The song tells of a fictional meeting between Dylan and Elvis. “I went back to see the gypsy/It was nearly early dawn/The gypsy's door was open wide/But the gypsy was gone” are lines that make me think of my death. Elvis isn’t dead in the song, but it feels that way.
When you’re of a certain disposition (socially maladjusted music fan), mixes are a way of articulating feelings without taking the risk of being rejected. Of course your crush will know how you feel, that’s what “This Guy’s In Love With You.” It’s safer than risking rejection as it offers deniability.
It can also backfire if a platonic mix is interpreted as amorous in intent, but that’s just one of the fun parts of being alive.
There is also a danger with mixes because relationships can move south and that can irrevocably taint the song. Elvis Costello, the Patron Saint of Music Dweebs, addresses that matter in “King Horse.” The song details an encounter between a man and woman. Like The Raspberries, he wants to go all the way, but she hesitates lest he turn out to be awful and ruin a favorite song. “If I ever lose this good thing that I've got/I never want to hear the song you dedicated tonight/'Cause I knew that song so long before we met/That it means much more than it might.”
A negative association doesn’t have to ruin a song for good, but it may take some time to reclaim it. I couldn’t listen to The Replacements for a while because of my association of them with someone who broke my heart.
I have heard of some instances where an acrimonious ending doesn’t ruin the music or the mixes. After reconnecting with someone I hadn’t spoken to for five years that not only had they kept and listened to the mixes I made them, but they also listened and loved new ones I made. You assume that when things end badly they just forget about you and rid themselves of every reminder. Sometimes that’s true and sometimes that’s not. And when it’s the latter it speaks to the depth of the connection.
To be thought of or remembered is a beautiful thing. It could be something simple as picking up someone’s favorite meal or sending them a photo of something that made you think of them. It’s an act that shows real care and thought. In an age of alienation, it’s very easy to feel unseen, unknowable and unlovable and for every relationship to feel transactional in nature. It is the balm we need against feeling like potatoes in a sack: living alongside one and other but not connecting.
The Man From O.N.C.L.E.
I sometimes feel I have access to the lathe of heaven, at least when it comes to movie screenings. Last month I wished that there was a screening of Punch-Drunk Love and then I discovered it was being shown at a rep theater in Orange County. Last year I remember wishing I could see an Altman on the big screen and then I found a showing for Nashville. On my half birthday, there was a screening of California Split on 35mm. After wishing I could see a Jacques Tati on the big screen I learned that there was a screening of Mon Oncle at the Academy Museum.
It was my first Tati and it was sheer delight. Visually striking and hilarious. One can see why Tati is a touchstone for Wes Anderson.
What You Leave Out
Blood On The Tracks is a classic break-up album and probably the first one people think of when naming divorce albums. It’s a record filled with emotionally devastating songs, but for me this is the one that packs the most punch. And it’s these lines that do it for me, “She might think that I've forgotten her/Don't tell her it isn't so.”
So much is conveyed by that. Is it a desire not to open old wounds? To not let the other party know that they still have a hold on you? Or is it fear of being hurt again because those feelings aren’t as dead as previously thought. Sometimes the noblest thing you can do is break the cycle of longing and hurt.