I have a love/hate relationship with music. I know that almost anyone who knows me knows my favorite band is Duran Duran. I will travel cross country to see them and push myself outside of my comfort zone driving in Dallas traffic to see them also. (Yes, that's a BIG deal for me).
Music of the 80's has such strong personal memories attached. My experience at Arkansas Governor's School has the theme song Friends by Michael W. Smith; my first love at Governor's School started with the theme song the Power of Love from the Karate Kid, transitioned to JoAnna by Kool and the Gang as the summer ended and ended up as If You Leave by OMD when we both attended Hendrix College the next year. I woke up every night for 2 weeks straight to the song JoAnna playing on the radio and I would drag the watercolor painting our friend had made for us out from under my bed and put my hand on his handprint and sob knowing that my first love had ended or laugh remembering how we inadvertently got the Art students banned from the art room that summer.
It is those memories that drive me away from music. I can't hear a song and not feel the memories attached.
Don't Cry for Me Argentina was one of my mom's favorites and when I close my eyes - I can see her standing in our house on Central. I've just come in from riding my mongoose bike and walked past the fish tank into the living room where my dad had hand wallpapered an entire wall with maps. There's the faint scent of a Tareyton Regular wafting through the air and a pot of spaghetti cooking in the background and she's singing this strangely out of place opera.
And that's normal. I walk back to my room to read a book or listen to Michael Jackson as I look at his posters on my wall and wonder if he's going to accept my invitation to take me to my Junior High Prom. (He did not)
My Uncle Brother was my only birth uncle - the baby of my Mom's family and my mother ADORED her baby brother. He'd stay at her house at Christmas and he taught my family how to end a phone call the proper way - say "I Love You". I can hear his voice saying those words phone call after phone call after phone call. And I can feel the ringing of the phone he refused to answer when he got sick. Call after call after call unanswered because he didn't want us to hear it in his voice. Dying makes a sound, you know. It gets into the body and almost tauntingly pokes its way out here and there long before the person is gone. Cruel Bastard that it is. Cruel.
And my song for Uncle Brother is Elton John - Daniel. His for me is - I Guess that's Why They Call It the Blues. No - he never sang it to me. I don't think that I ever heard him sing. But I played those two songs over and over and over again on my way to Ft. Worth to visit him. One of many "Come Now if You Want to See Him Again" trips. I cried and cried and sang LOUDLY that trip. Only made it halfway to Ft. Worth before abandoning the idea to come home for a political rally. But it was a start for me - someone who gets such anxiety over driving long distances, driving on the highway, driving in new places - the sinking stomach, every sound is amplified kind of anxiety. We never discussed whys or hows or what happened - but Uncle Brother was my strongest ally during my ongoing 6+ year separation. He was never as strong as my mother - no one was. But in our conversations, I knew he empathized and I knew that he knew how it hurt and I knew that he didn't judge me and that one day I'd find someone that made me happy again. Or for the first time. That I'd smile and laugh and that in the end I would find my voice and sing out loud. Maybe even in public.
