Anniversary Song

I only have one piece of sheet music in my house -- I can't read music or play any instrument. It is a photocopy of the Anniversary Song and was my grandma's favorite song. At one point she played a bit of piano and, though she was rusty, I remember her coming to our house and playing bits of that song. Since it was my grandma's favorite and reminded her of my grandpa, the song is one of my Mom's favorites too. She also plays bits of the song now and again.

I woke up this morning thinking about the song and realized I have never even watched The Jolson Story (Netflix!) The song was arranged and lyrics added in 1946 by Al Jolson and Saul Chaplin, but it is a Romanian waltz, Valurile Dunării, composed by Iosif Ivanovici in 1880. I learned that in Korea the song is known as The Psalm of Death.


Not having watched The Jolson Story, I'm not really sure what is happening in this clip (there is a sinister looking man at the dinner table!) and I'll admit my favorite part is when papa hums.



This one sounds most like I hear it in my head:

Halloween Music Mash

I'm going to one of my favorite Chicago theaters tonight to see Monsters of Folk. I wanted to do something music this weekend but I have to work tomorrow and have a 15k run early Sunday morning.



(photo from http://www.explorechicago.org)

Bob Dylan and his Band are at the Aragon Ballroom and that would be fun, but I have decided I will not go see Bob Dylan. I never have and made that decision about 15 years ago. If I get a time machine and can go back to the early 70s okay, but other than that I think it would just make me sad. (Who am I kidding, if a bunch of people were going I would go too, I just won't go out of my way and seek it as a musical thing rather than a social one.)

Tomorrow night Roky Erickson is playing at the Bottom Lounge but I think a late night show before a long run would be a bad idea. I saw Roky Erickson last year at the Double Door and it was actually kind of sad. He seemed uncomfortable on stage and spent a lot of the show with his back to the audience. I left hoping he really wanted to be doing the shows and was enjoying the experience rather than being manipulated or taken advantage of by guardian. The documentary about his You're Gonna Miss Me is very interesting and it is worth watching the bonus material section about his mother. Worth watching in a "Grey Gardens" kind of crazy way.

Roky Erickson would be good Halloween music though, and I've been thinking about Halloween music lately. I made cards to send out to friends this year that had a "record player" motif. I made a little LP and wanted to write the name of a Halloween song. I decided they pretty much all stink. When I looked at various playlists people have for Halloween they tend to put a lot of goth and Alice Cooper and songs that mention the devil. I suppose that works but it doesn't seem really Halloween to me. Same with the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack.

Top Halloween songs on many posted playlists are the dreaded Monster Mash, Werewolves of London and Thriller. I'm good with Michael Jackson but Thriller is not my favorite. Love the album, love the dancing, will bow down to the ground breaking video and pop culture milestone of it all. I even love the zipper jacket but I don't love that song. I especially hate that Vincent Price spoken word part.

Bela Lugosi's Dead, Nemesis, and Voodoo Lady would make it onto my Halloween playlist. I'm surprised how many online lists have left off Ministry's (Everyday is) Halloween, I guess the kids today are not into early Ministry. I loved With Sympathy when I was in high school. During graduate school, I supervised a freshman guy who really liked Ministry. But he liked Ministry in 1992, not Ministry in 1983. He was absolutely crushed when I lent him With Sympathy and Twitch to discover that his metal band started out making poncy dance music.

For my Halloween card, I decided that only about 2% of the recipients would remember (if they ever knew) early Ministry (you know who you are!)I made up my own song name. I really, really wanted to include a band name (The Raisinettes) but the space was too small and my writing too sloppy to fit it in. But thinking about it was fun. When I get home from work tomorrow night, I'm going to make a big bowl of pasta carbonara (carb loading!)and listen to my own Halloween playlist. Maybe I'll even get myself a big candy bar -- no little fun sized treat for me.

The Enormous Headphones, Part I (Apologies to John Cheever and his Radio)

People thought he was crazy.
A creep.
Probably some sort of pervert.

Every now and again, someone (usually a woman) felt guilty about this knee-jerk judgment. She'd wonder if he was retarded (people don't think in politically correct terminology) and scan his face for telltale signs of Downs Syndrome. Between the mirrored sunglasses and big headphones, she wouldn't be able to see enough of his face to tell and she'd remind herself that some mental and intellectual disabilities aren't visible anyway.

Maybe he's had a head injury?

When he got on a bus, they all hoped he wouldn't sit next to them. They wondered if he was going to stink and hope he wouldn't talk to them or ask for money. He didn't guess what people thought based on the dirty looks they gave him or their body language, he knew what they were thinking because he could read their minds.

It started out innocently, earbuds hurt his ears. He decided to get a pair of headphones instead, real headphones. The kind that would fit over his ears instead of inside or on top of them. He didn't want to spend a lot of money since he'd lose or break them eventually. He planned to toss them in his backpack and use them on the bus to and from work.

The electronics section at the thrift shop had all sorts of stuff. Broken transistor radios, old stereos, lots of Walkmans and portable CD players. There was an entire bin filled with headphones: "$1 unless otherwise marked." One-by-one he pulled them out to see if the jack would fit in his iPod. Most were too big, some had torn and scratchy vinyl, some didn't work even if the jack fit. One pair seemed to be a handyman special. It was a full-sized pair for use with a stereo but had a smaller jack spliced onto the cord. He was skeptical when he plugged them in but they worked. He jiggled the chord around a bit to see if the wires would shake loose. Hey, for a dollar he'd give them a try.

In the thrift store, everything was normal. He listened to some Johnny Cash, some Beatles, some Miles Davis. Everything was still normal when he got home and tried them on in front of the bathroom mirror. He was self-conscious about going out in public with them on. He knew he looked stupid and asked Beth if they were too dorky to wear around town. She laughed and said he was adorable when he looked dorky and kissed him.

That Monday morning, everything changed though. He was sitting on the bus across from a scowling man in a business suit and listening to the Four Tops. An old lady with grocery bags was slowly making her way up the ramp the driver had lowered for her.

Jesus Christ! Do we have to stop at every Goddam' corner? Why can't that old lady do her shopping later? People need to get to work!

He was shocked; he couldn't believe that man actually shouted that out. No one else looked shocked though. No one else had even looked up from their sudoku puzzles or magazines. He realized then that the man's face had not changed and his mouth had never moved. He must have just imagined it.

Come on already, you old bag! Sit down and let's get moving! Seniors shouldn't get free rides during rush hour. Stupid old woman.

He turned toward the bored looking teenage girl next to him. She was staring out the window, drinking a Diet Coke.

I don't want to go to stupid school today. I wonder if Trey will be in math 'cause I look hot in these jeans. Math sucks though.

He looked at the attractive redhead across the aisle.

If I can get out by 5:15 I can make it to Dominick's to pick up the cream I need for that potato dish and still get home in time to get things started before Mike and Susan arrive. Should I make a salad too? Crap, I forgot to bring that dry cleaners ticket. Oh well, I can just give them my name. I need to call Cara at lunch today.

He was reading their minds!

He had to experimented with it a bit. He discovered he had to be looking at someone to tune into them and eliminate stray thoughts from other people (he wore the mirrored glasses so people couldn't tell he was staring). It didn't work on kids or pets and animals sensed that there was something different about him. Mr. Fritzy, Beth's cat, took a sudden dislike to him and hissed and ran out of the room as soon as he entered. The neighbors' dog started to bark and growl at him too.

The best place to read minds was on the bus, the train was too loud and he "lost the signal" when it went below ground. If he walked down the street, people would pass too quickly for him to listen in and if he followed behind them on foot he risked confrontation. One woman, who was planning to seduce a cute bartender, pulled out a can a mace when he followed her too long, too close, and too late at night. Even though he knew it was coming, he was barely able to jump back and run off in time. Coffee shops were okay, but too often the people there were reading and he'd just get snippets of their book.

He knew he should turn the headphones over to the government and imagined being a homeland security hero by reading the minds of terrorist suspects. But the government would take the headphones away and he'd never be able to use them for fun again. He wished he could use his power for financial gain but was stumped on how he could wear the headphones at a high stakes poker game or inside a casino(surely they had rules about that). They were useless to him at the horse and dog tracks and it wouldn't work for online gambling either (he tried). He'd need a better source of income eventually, work was a problem. Finding out how to use his mind reading powers took time and then, once he had it figured out, he wanted to do it all the time. He started taking longer lunches, arriving late, and leaving early. Then he took sick and vacation days. Beth would have been furious about that if they had stayed together, they were both supposed to be saving their days for a beach vacation next year.

Beth was a problem in other ways too. He desperately wanted to know what she was thinking but it was hard to come up with reasons to sit around the house in his headphones. With just the two of them there, he really didn't need to look at her. He knew whose thoughts he was hearing. But how could he explain wearing the headphones all the time? At first, he told her he was listening to work related recorded books and using his headphones so she didn't have to hear the dry, technical stuff. He was frustrated that her thoughts were consistent with what she said to him. She must be telling him lies and keeping secrets. He did learn that when he wanted to order pizza, she wanted Thai instead but didn't make a fuss; that she really, really hated the Bears table lamp he had on his nightstand; that she wished he would take responsibility for sending out birthday cards to his family rather than relying on her to do it; and that she liked his friend Josh even less than she let on. He wanted something juicier about her though, he wanted to catch her in bigger deceptions. He wanted to lead the conversation to certain topics and compare what she said to what she was thinking. But how could he have a serious conversation with her if he was pretending to listen to music or recordings?

That ruse only lasted a few weeks anyway. She started to ask too many questions about what he was learning for work, told him it was fine to listen to them on the speakers sometimes, and got annoyed that he did it every night. She started to get suspicious and wondered if he was listening to some sort of porn thing. She wanted to hear what he was listening to. Her feelings were hurt and she felt like he was shutting her out. They started to have more frequent arguments because he had his headphones on all the time.

He got up in the middle of the night so he could listen in on her dreams. The dreams were weird and he wondered if all dreams were like this or just hers. They didn't seem to be the same as his at least. He could not really put the dreams into words, they were just feelings and sensations. He wondered if she was unbalanced. Maybe she was shallow and unintelligent too and that was why he didn't learn big secrets about how she felt about him. Sometimes she pretended to be asleep; she had no interest in having sex with him. He wondered if she had always been this disinterested or if it was related to their recent arguments. He would have loved to have sex with the headphones on but knew she'd never go for it.

He came home before she did and hid in the coat closet. He wanted to find out what she thought about when he wasn't around. He did this a few times before she caught him. She was furious and accused him of spying on her.

"You're crazy! What's happened to you?"
Oh my God he's having some sort of nervous breakdown. There's something really wrong.

"What's the deal with those stupid headphones anyway? What are you really doing?"
Ever since he got those stupid headphones he's been like this!

"You either get rid of the headphones or move out. We can't live like this anymore"
I can't believe I am giving an ultimatum "It the headphones or me" I bet he picks the headphones!"

"Please, tell me what's wrong. We can get help if you need it. We can go to counseling together. I'll go with you."
Maybe I shouldn't be so angry, there must be something wrong with him. Does mental illness run in his family? I don't know if I can deal with a boyfriend with major psychological problems.

He couldn't tell her the truth, the headphones were his and he didn't want to share them. Not even with her. Not to mention, if she knew what he had been doing she'd be even more angry. They might not even work for her and then she'd think he was crazy for real. He denied he a problem; said she was making too much out of it; claimed he wasn't spying on her, just trying to get some peace and quiet away from her nagging; accused her of being paranoid and suspicious; said he'd wear his headphones whenever and wherever he wanted; and refused to talk about it any more. She told him to pack his things and leave. As he got his things together, he heard her crying and thinking about how disappointed and worried she was. She felt guilty and angry. She yelled at him to take his Bear's lamp while thinking that at least she wouldn't have to look at that every morning.

To be continued ...

Orange Crush

At the beginning of summer, I decided to separate and re-pot the overgrown aloe plant I bought about 6 years ago. It had been growing gangbusters for many years and I read several "how to" essays from the internet, bought special soil for succulents and spent the afternoon dividing and potting. I had re-potted before, but left the plant intact.

I ran out of pots and decided to take the original part of the plant, now huge and gangly, and put it into a pot with one of my Wandering Jew plants. I thought of it as the battle of the cockroach plants since both of them seemed to be unkillable. But, since the pot was going to hang out on my porch, I figured the aloe was doomed to die. The Wandering Jew would take over and the aloe would get too much rain and sun.

Today I brought all my plants inside, it is cold enough that frost is bound to come any night now. Both the aloe and the Wandering Jew are doing fine, but all of my other aloe plants are mostly dead. I did NOT overwater them at the time of re-pot, and have barely watered any of them since, but they have become all bloated and black in spots, the roots have rotted away. It is as if the soil had too much nutrient and the plants sucked them all up at once. At least once a week all summer, i wake up to find a fleshy aloe limb plopped down on my floor. Sometimes I hear them drop in the middle of the night.

Every time I have to throw a limb away, it makes me sad. I feel guilty and I want to know what I did wrong. There is something much worse about throwing a piece of big, juicy plant in the garbage can than there is about throwing crusty and dried up plant away. The limbs feel alive but amputated.

Not long ago, I watched the first segment of the Time-Life series on Vietnam and learned that Agent Orange worked by mimicking plant growth hormone that induced rapid, uncontrolled growth in the plants. I have to say, thoughts of Agent Orange; Vietnam; and fleshy, amputated limbs that plop on the ground in the middle of the night make for some bad nights of sleep.

Cigarette Series

Irving Penn died.

Right now I am thinking about an exhibit I went to see with my friend J. in NYC. I can't remember whose collection it was but it was a bunch of the greats. Absolute best part though, was a wall with a few from the Cigarette Series. I kept walking back to them. I'd move on and come back. Move on and come back.

Up close and gritty, hideous and lovely.

Blue Veins and Hot Blood

I've got veins on the brain today.
Arteries, to be more accurate. Clogged arteries, stents, angioplasty, bypass surgery, pace makers, restricted diets, coumadin, weeks in the cardiac ICU waiting room and how, no matter how old you are, it always seems to soon to lose your mom.

I don't know that there's a song about all that but I always like some Jack White when I'm feeling frustrated and angry.

Get out of my Head!

I can't get the song Wichita Lineman out of my head. It's been there since about noon on Sunday.

Leave me alone, Glen Campbell!

Sweet Spot (creative writing exercise)

Part 1: Sweet Spot

Yesterday was so boring.

I hate Sundays and I hate going to church. Daddy doesn’t have to go at all. I already go on Tuesdays at school so that makes it two times a week instead of just one time like most go.

TV on Sunday is really boring too. Daddy watched Star Trek and, when I said it was a stupid show, he told me to go play. So I played with the record cabinet.

I love the way the inside smells and there’s a ditch thing cut into the doors to make a design. The dent part is painted black and the flat part is just wood colored. The dent is the exact same size of my pointer finger and I pretended it was a road and raced my fingers around and made tire squeal noised at the curves. Then I played with the magnets that keep the doors shut. I like the clicking sound they make when doors gets sucked closed.

Daddy told me to quiet down, so I made up a game where I piled of my 5 favorites record covers, then my 4 favorites, and then down to my absolute favorite favorite.

I like the ladies in purple underwear on Ferrante and Teicher. We have lots of Ferrante and Teicher but we never play those records.
The John Denver record is good too and Mama listens to that one a lot. I like the pictures of his family on the inside. I think I’d like to live on a farm.
Johnny Mathis has really big eyebrows and is wearing skiing clothes. I’ve never gone skiing but I have gone ice skating. We only listen to that one at Christmastime.
Neil Diamond looks like he’s in the middle of a big sneeze on Hot August Night. Mama loves Neil Diamond and has gone to see him at Pine Knob a bunch of times.
Cheech & Chong is my favorite though. That one belongs to Daddy. There’s a flap that is the outside of a car and you can open it up to see the insides of the door. Not inside the car, the inside the actual door. Cheech & Chong both look like Sonny.

Mama came by and said I was going to scratch the records and made me put them away. I asked her if I could listen to the radio with the headphones. I love the headphones. They’re like having fly eyes on the side of your head. I like plugging the headphones into the round hole in the front of the stereo, especially if it is already turned on. When you do that, you can hear a loud ZZZAPPPPP noise but Mama told me not to do that. The curly cord to the headphones isn’t very long and, when Daddy uses them, he sits in the green Lazy-Boy chair right in front of the stereo. But I crawled behind the chair and stretched my feet up the wall over the heating vent. Heating vents are fun too, if you yell into them it makes and echo.

When I put headphones on I can hear myself breathing inside my head.

Hello. (Hello)
Can. You. Hear. me? (Can. You. Hear. me?)

I held my breath and pinched my nose to see what would happen. Nothing. I turned the knob on the radio and could see it light up inside. First there was a hum and then the music came on. I closed my eyes and thought about what side of my head the different parts of the music came from. I usually picked the voices to follow.

Right side. Left side.
Both.
Left side. Right side.
Both.

Headphone music is so much different than speaker music. It’s like all of outer space is swirling around inside my head and there is nothing outside of me. Behind my eyelids, my eyeballs darted back & forth, up & down, and all around as if I’m watching billions of falling stars. But the rest of me is completely frozen like in Statue Maker. I felt really happy and floaty.


Part 2: The Man Who Sold the World
If I could go back in time to the day I discovered how it felt to have music inside my head, I wouldn’t do anything different. I’d still just lie there on the floor and feel as big as the universe.

Not long after that, my dad moved out of our house and into an apartment with the lady who would become his second wife. He took the stereo, the headphones and the Cheech & Chong album. My mom bought an inexpensive, used stereo from our neighbor, who owned a radio and TV repair business. The new one didn’t have headphones but it did have an 8-track player. For a long time we only had four 8-track tapes though: Neil Diamond’s Greatest Hits, John Denver’s Greatest Hits, The Mamas and the Papas Greatest Hits and a god-awful Star Wars soundtrack played on a Wurlitzer. None of them had good cover art.

At the time, that day with the headphones didn’t seem special; I didn’t even think about it after it happened. As soon as there were friends to play with and cartoons to watch, I didn’t give the music or what went on inside my head a second thought. But I must have tucked the memory away somewhere, because I rediscovered the shooting stars and sense of calm several years later. By that time, I desperately wanted a place to retreat. An escape from a step-father I hated and the horrifying, catty world of teenage girls.

To be honest, I can’t even be sure that the memory is real and all of that really happened in a single afternoon. I’ve probably combined a lot of days and small memories. I do know that it feels like a real memory and that I’ve believed in it for a long time now. The first time I really listened to The Man Who Sold the World and Life on Mars, I was convinced that I must have heard David Bowie that day. But at other times I've thought that about Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and a half dozen other songs too. And I thought about that day when I stood in the “sweet spot” of a boyfriend's basement recording studio. He had spent weeks putting together a system of itchy fiberglass panels and a wall of PVC pipes to get the effect he was after. When it was all done and he invited me down to listen, I actually felt Led Zeppelin bounce off the walls, dance around me and jump inside my ears.

A lot has changed since that afternoon. I don’t hate Sundays anymore and don’t go to church. There are a lot more options for Sunday afternoon TV but I actually do like to watch all generations of Star Trek. I haven’t seen or talked to my dad in close to 20 years and I’m not sure what my mom and step-dad did with the record cabinet when they moved but, I do have my own stereo now. It has glowing orange tubes that hum when I turn it on and bug-eye headphones. When I use them, I still lie on my back with my feet up the wall, close my eyes and watch the shooting stars.

Nice Bandana

Evening plan? Go to bed early with a good book.
Evening reality? Bret Michaels Behind the Music on VH1.