Category Archives: Music

07
July
2013
Tags: Music
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C’mon N’ Ride It

This is high on the list of the silliest songs I’ve ever heard, but it goes back to my days at Structure. Lately, I’ve done a bit of reminiscing over what may have been the most fun job I’ve ever had, so it’s the perfect time to put it up and remember when summer was nothing but carefree college-break fun and lack of responsibility. At that time, I was working the summer at the Faneuil Hall Structure store (where an obnoxious Abercrombie & Fitch complex now smells stands).

I was turning 21 that year, but to be honest, that was less exciting than might be assumed. I wasn’t an early drinker, so I couldn’t care less about being legal. It was more fun to go into work and banter with my managers and co-workers, interact with people who were on vacation and passing through Boston, than to get rip-roaring drunk at the local dive bar. (God I was young and stupid.)

On the speakers in the store was this song, which we all learned inside and out because 35 hours a week of the same tape playing over and over, well, you learn every word, every beat, and every sequence – so much so that to this day when I hear one of these songs I immediately listen for the follow-up that never arrives. (This was still not as annoying as the holiday tape – that mofo could threaten the most level-headed person’s sanity.)

And so I’d try to cajole my friends into doing the choo-choo train whenever the beats kicked in, teasing one of the lone straight guys named Spencer into following my fist pumps (which he never did), and otherwise making the time fly faster than I wish it had. If I’d only known to slow things down, to relish the moment, to savor the minutes… I would have had so much more fun. But then again, how much more fun would have been possible? It was a damn good time, and we rode that party train to the very end of the rail.

Incidentally, how can you help but love a song that has ‘The Train’ as its subtitle? C’mon…

I think I can, I think I can…

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05
July
2013
Tags: Gay, Music
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A Day Late: All American Boy

If there’s a song, an artist, and a video that’s going to be get me into country music, this is all of that and more. Steve Grand is the first openly-gay male country performer I can recall, and he’s got balls to so eloquently be who he is in a genre that is filled with, well, folks who don’t embrace the gays. While the song plugs slowly along (I’m still not a fan of country, no matter how shirtless (and pantsless!) Mr. Grand may get) the video is kind of heartbreaking, kind of hopeful, and kind of resonant if you’ve ever had a crush on someone who’s just not into you.

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04
July
2013
Tags: Music
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All the Way to New York

You’re right next to me
But I need an airplane
I can feel the distance as you breathe

The voice carries over the phone. Weightless, thousands of miles apart, no longer by wire, no longer by signal, only by heart. No matter how far, the same sky flies overhead, the same moon and stars, the same sun in the morning. It is small solace.

China decorates our table
Funny how the cracks don’t seem to show
Pour the wine dear
You say we’ll take a holiday
But we never can agree on where to go

Twisting in damp sheets, then rising like someone who forgot they were underwater, gasping from a demon dream, I wake in the heart of night. But I am not in bed, I am beneath a small blanket, and the pilot has turned the seatbelt sign on. Next to me, the other passengers sleep.

Sometimes I think you want me to touch you
How can I when you build the great wall around you
In your eyes I saw a future together
You just look away in the distance

I look out the window. The first light of dawn begins shading the sky. Down the aisle, the night lights glow. I close my eyes.

China all the way to New York
Maybe you got lost in Mexico
You’re right next to me
I think that you can hear me
Funny how the distance
Learns to grow

On the other side of the world, I wake up. Alone. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be… The world without end.

Sometimes I think you want me to touch you
How can I when you build the great wall around you
In your eyes I saw the future
Together you just look away in the distance

The ocean laps the same way on every coast. The waves fall under the spell of the same moon. We are all connected by water. Never so far… never so dear… never so.

I can feel the distance
I can feel the distance
I can feel the distance getting close.
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25
June
2013
Tags: Music
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Give My Gun Away When It’s Loaded

I woke up at 4:30 this morning.

There’s not much to do when it’s 4:30 in the morning.

Well, there’s tons to do, but none of it is very interactive, none of it very inclusive.

It’s the best time to do something.

I walk into the backyard, which for the first time in a long time is warmer than the house at this time of the day. I take a few pictures of the pool in the earliest light. It might double as dusk if it wasn’t so quiet. Even the birds are subdued at this early hour.

I search the line of pines high against the sky, and behind a dying one I see it. The moon. Remnants of its super-version a couple of days ago remain. It nestles in the crook between brightening sky and silhouetted tree. I don’t think I’ve seen the moon at 4:30 in the morning, at least not on this continent. Endless summer nights in Russia and Finland come to mind, a bride arriving by boat across the lake, walking beneath branches of birch that we all held aloft. A lake-side cottage I shared with my mother. The burning stones of a sauna, and a nosebleed that wouldn’t stop.

There was a statue of bears at the bottom of the hill, and a castle of stone that had stood forever, is standing there still, will be standing there long after we have all departed. The bold strokes of Sibelius fill my mind, memories of a tyrannical conductor explaining the piece of music like a carriage pulled by wild horses through a winter forest.

How strange that the morning moon should bring me half a world away, and back so many years. Whatever that boy wanted to find on the steps of all those castles, in the trampled forest paths, in a dark lake beneath a sky of stars – I still don’t know what it was.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The birds are up now. The family of robins is back on alert, chirping and warning and feeding. The moon has gone, back behind the pines, lost in the brighter sky, the high clouds. I listen for the first airplane of the day, wish that I was on it, going somewhere, anywhere. A change of scenery. Even on its most beautiful mornings, summer inspires that.

Calling back and forth, the robins break the day. Other birds join in the chatter. The silence is gone but the stillness remains. The hanging ferns that spun so wildly in last night’s breeze are motionless. The fountain grass, already head-high, stands still, its banners of green no longer fluttering in the wind. Even the loftiest branches of the pines, usually swaying ever-so-slightly in the smallest shift of air, do not betray movement.

What a precarious place to be… 4:47 in the morning, when thoughts are so pure and clear. Those who people your mind at such a time are the ones who will haunt you.

But who has a claim on anyone?

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23
June
2013
Tags: Music
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Music for a Darkened Theater

For many movies, the mood is all in the music. For summer movies that seems especially true. Give me a good movie theme and I’m a happy popcorn-munching fan. With the exception of John Williams, no other composer instills more atmospheric music into the movies than Danny Elfman. He does most of Tim Burton’s movies, including the first two ‘Batman’ reboots. More than even Madonna and ‘Cherish’, this is the music that made the summer of 1989. Give it a listen and see if it brings you back.

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20
June
2013
Tags: Gay Blog, Madonna, Music
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The Madonna Timeline: Song #94 – ‘Crazy For You’ ~ 1985

{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}

There is cracked ice still lingering on the sidewalks. I am walking on his street, the street where he lives, not sure why I am being drawn here. The pull of a confusing longing, the push of a future unfolding, and the simple wish to be closer to him all play a part. The dirty mixture of mud and left-over snow and road salt leaves my sneakers a muddled mess, but I’m too young to care about such things. (Yes, there was such a time, when my outfits were picked out by my Mom, and my shoes were bought with the requisite struggle of getting a boy to sit still long enough for a new pair of shoes.)

Swaying room as the music starts
Strangers making the most of the dark
Two by two their bodies become one

I stood outside of his house for a moment, studying the gray stone, wondering at which bedroom he inhabited. Sheer curtains tantalized and teased, while the wrought-iron of a gate or a door – I can’t remember which now – guarded the home from strangers. I walked on, not wishing to be caught (though not exactly wishing against it). I’m sure some small part of me hoped he would come out, invite me in, talk to me, engage in some way, any way. Even as a kid I longed for connection. Even before I had my heart broken, I felt the ache.

After walking a few blocks, I was back home. My face was red from the cool wind, nose running and eyes watering. After kicking off my dirty sneakers at the door, I bounded upstairs, into the safe haven of a childhood bedroom. My stomach was churning, turning over itself it seemed, and my heart raced. It felt like I wanted to cry and laugh and throw-up at the same time. In the briefest of moments I went from giddy hopefulness to utter despair. I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know about love, or infatuation, or even simple crushes. I didn’t know about romance or obsession or desire. I only knew that I liked a boy, and I couldn’t even tell you why.

I must have been in fourth or fifth grade ~ strange that I can’t remember which now ~ and winter was slowly turning into spring. The ice was thawing, the ground was revealing itself through the snow, and drops of water encased the world. Suddenly, it seemed everything was melting. On the radio at night, Fly 92 played their ‘Top Ten at Ten.’ I would have it on softly in the background, as I was supposed to be asleep by that time. In those weeks, it was a showdown between the dirty blondes: Madonna versus Samantha Fox. Madonna was singing for love while Samantha sang for sex, as ‘Crazy For You’ battled ‘Touch Me’ for the top spot. They went back and forth for weeks before both songs got retired (those were the days when actual call-ins to radio stations held the most sway, and a single song could feasibly stay on top for months unless it was retired).

I see you through the smoky air
Can’t you feel the weight of my stare
You’re so close but still a world away
What I’m dying to say, is that I’m crazy for you

He was the new boy in class. He had moved in half-way during the year, I think, but even if he slipped in during summer break, his newness to our class would have been instantly noticeable. I didn’t exactly have a crush on him ~ he hadn’t even grown into himself, with his leftover baby-fat, old-fashioned thick glasses, and mop of ginger hair. I had a crush on his hurt ~ the gorgeous pain and exquisite suffering of being the new kid in school ~ each pang and assault deliberately, calculatingly, and wondrously inflicted by my own machinations. It was the supreme vulnerability of being a boy that so enraptured me ~ the delicate nature of being a man. Girls could hide everything inside ~ boys had to let it all hang out ~ and one was very much safer than the other, or so it seemed to me. Brute force and physical strength only go so far, and I saw then that the real power did not reside in the external protuberance of the almighty cock, but in the hidden reverse tomb of the womb.

I was not kind to him, even if our parents were colleagues. My cruelty was as unwarranted as it was childish, my actions as mean-spirited as they were baseless. If I couldn’t have him, if I couldn’t make sense of what I was feeling for him, I would make him suffer. I would make them all suffer. Of this I am not proud. It came from a place of hurt and desertion, but I do not think that justifies any of it.

Do not hold this against me, little boy, for you must know that all the pain I deliver unto you will not approach, will not even come remotely close to the atrocities I will inflict upon myself. You will be avenged, for I will avenge you. All that you do not know, I will learn, and all of your hurt I will one day claim as my own. I will make you, and you will be the ruin of me. There was never any other outcome, and if I stole my glory then, if I took my chance and pierced your heart before you had a chance to steal mine, well, who could have done otherwise? Who would have done differently?

Touch me once and you’ll know it’s true
I never wanted anyone like this
It’s all brand new, you’ll feel it in my kiss
I’m crazy for you, crazy for you

All the while, Madonna sang this song every night. One time, I managed to record most of it on a blank cassette tape. On an out-of-town ride to dinner a few days later, I made my parents rewind it over and over, as I sat in the backseat with my brother, watching raindrops collect on the windows. Again and again I asked them to press rewind, as it was the only way I had to subdue my burgeoning thoughts. What would I do with all this… feeling? What would I ever do? It frightened me, there was no containing it. And at the same time it thrilled. I would forego all sorts of safety for this madness, the giddy insanity of instant infatuation. If anyone had ever gone through this, how did they survive it? And what was the answer, the solution, the thing that ended it all in one way or another? I sought that then, as I would seek it forever after, and to this day I don’t know if it has an ending. For so many important things, there were no answers. I thought then that it was just me being a kid.

Trying hard to control my heart
I walk over to where you are
Eye to eye we need no words at all

I had no way of knowing if what I was feeling was normal. By then, I understood that boys were meant to be with girls, that men married women and had children and lived happily ever after. The stirrings that older neighborhood boys inspired in me when they took off their shirts and swam in our pool were nothing compared to this, and my only other reference was a strange spell cast upon me by a summer camp counselor. (I watched him play wiffle-ball in the gymnasium one rainy camp day, tracing the line of sweat that ran down the back of his t-shirt. His hands would idly lift that shirt up, expose a bit of his stomach, then lower it. He caught me looking, his blue eyes crinkling up in a friendly, if impersonal, smile. Looking right through me, for I was just a trifling of a wisp, not worth noting, not worth acknowledging with any sort of effort. I still remember him.)

But this boy knew me, and I sensed he might need a friend. The notion repulsed me as much as it endeared him to me. To be so alone in a new school, to be somewhat different and out of place ~ it served only to arm me against him. And I, to my eternal shame, did not extend a hand. I felt then, as I often do now, no need for a friend. It’s an awful way to think, and if I’ve learned anything in thirty-seven years it’s to remain open to new people, new experiences, new friends. Maybe that was his lesson for me, but I didn’t see it then. All I could feel was ache and want, a sickening mixture of conflicting emotions, and a rage founded on the impossibility of the person I was becoming.

Slowly now we begin to move
Every breath I’m deeper into you
Soon we two are standing still in time
If you read my mind, you’ll see I’m crazy for you…

I kept it all inside. No family or friends would hear my story, no one would listen as I unburdened my feelings. The only thing I had was Madonna, singing of the same sense of longing, of wanting to share something. But she had eyes in which to look, another person who might return the gaze; I had no one. And so I pined, and prayed, and hoped for resolution. I felt constantly on the verge of weeping, distraught and condemned and prone to the wildest fantasies. From that moment on, my heart would never be quiet. I knew it then. I was already ruined.

Touch me once and you’ll know it’s true
I never wanted anyone like this
It’s all brand new, you’ll feel it in my kiss
You’ll feel it in my kiss because I’m crazy for you

Eventually, the obsession faded, and the object of my focus grew up and out of his awkwardness. If I were any sort of sane person, that’s when a crush would have kicked in. Instead, I went the opposite direction. As he became more popular, I lost all interest in him. Over the years, we reached a sort of truce. He forgave me for my cruelty, and I left him alone. (Considering that he had also shot up to tower over me, this was a practical choice of safety too.) I don’t know if I’ve forgiven him for forgiving me. I suppose he wanted to forget it ever happened, and I’ll bet he already has. But not me. I can forget any random act of kindness I’ve chanced to commit, and all in a matter of a few hours, but my cruelty… my cruelty haunts me ever after.

Touch me once and you’ll know it’s true
I never wanted anyone like this
It’s all brand new, you’ll feel it in my kiss
You’ll feel it in my kiss because… I’m crazy for you

There are still spring nights when I hear this song, and the thrill of that first time comes flooding back. I’m a boy again, a strange little boy born differently from so many of the other boys, and I know they can sense I’m different when all I want to do is belong.

A sidewalk crackling with ice. A car window dotted with rain. A restless boy stained with tears.

On those nights, there is no comfort or succor, no peace or understanding. There is no way to quell the heart. I play this song, over and over and over, trying to find meaning, trying to uncover the secret that will bring it all into crystalline form, perfect resolution ~ definitive and implacable ~ and none of it ever comes. If anything, it fades further from focus, retreating into the distance, ever out of reach, teasing and taunting and leaving me behind. And alone.

I’m crazy for you.
Crazy for you…
Crazy for you.

Song #94: ‘Crazy For You’ ~ 1985

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20
June
2013
Tags: Madonna, Music
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Epic Madonna

Fresh off her premiere of the filmed version of the MDNA Tour, Madonna inched her way back into the spotlight in stunning Marlene-Dietrich-like form. I am so digging the top hat and bow tie look here. No woman does androgyny better, and no one ever will. (Okay, that’s easily disputable, but it sounded good.) While I gear up for the next special installment of the Madonna Timeline (the song and memory of which actually inspired the whole Madonna Timeline itself, and at #94 it’s taken a while to come around on the iPod…) I’m giving a quick look at some summer highlights of previous entries that may have gone undetected by your radar. (By the way, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page and check out the ‘Search’ box, you can type in a Madonna song and see if it’s already been covered.)

Before the summer is the spring, and the spring of 1998 was marked by ‘Little Star’, and a residual melancholy from winter, and a decade and a half before. It still haunts me.

1990 marked the summer of ‘Dick Tracy’ and Madonna’s incendiary performance as Breathless Mahoney. That sexy chanteuse sang ‘Sooner or Later’ with the determination of a vixen hell-bent on getting her man. It was an inspiration.

The summer of 2009 was a high-flying good time, with some highlights in Boston and lowlights in Ithaca, and as the last summer of my official single-hood, it was a time of ‘Celebration’.

Last summer was capped by the deceptively upbeat and desperately escapist ‘Turn Up the Radio’ – one of the only times that a current Madonna single coincided with this relatively new Madonna Timeline. It’s one of my favorite entries, because it juxtaposes such a happy song with such a bummer of a summer.

The summer of 1998 was all about ‘Ray of Light’ – the album and the single – and this song dominated a turning point in my previously-angst-ridden existence. It marked Madonna’s ultimate comeback, and remains the best album of her career (thus far).

Memories of my father from 1986 came back with her ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ single from the summer of ‘True Blue‘. The follow-up to the scorching ‘Live To Tell’, it marked another familial milestone, the beginning of a long line of Madonna-related family moments.

For the next timeline (which goes all the way back to 1985, making it one of the earliest Madonna memories) we’ll return to the very earliest of spring, a time when the first pangs of adolescence began to prick my youthful heart, and things were about to go, well… Crazy.

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04
June
2013
Tags: Music
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How Long Will It Take To Get Used To Me?

Operator the lines are down, are down
And I’m traitor, a traitor to a beautiful cause
God made me to her own design
Bad planning, too many flaws
How long will it take to get used to me?
How long will it take to get used to me?
Don’t wait that long, won’t wait that long
Don’t wait that long, don’t wait that long…

The end of my first year at Brandeis. Back in Amsterdam for the summer. The girl I was dating thought I was a better man than I would ever be. I knew it. She would come to know it, years later, but I couldn’t show her that then. I tried. I think I tried. Maybe we were just pretending though, both of us.

In the days leading up to that summer, in the messy fumblings of backseats, in grass cool and wet with dew, we thought we could find a way into each other, into the hearts that would carry us far into the future, together. We would only have that one summer. The spring was already going. We held onto it as we held onto each other, hoping it would last, even though we somehow knew it couldn’t. The magic of a spring night is fleeting at best, never to be captured for very long.

Oh yes I love you, but today I could hate you, I could hurt you
Cause were joined at the heart
Beats faster, hits harder than a boxer whenever we are apart
Body language is an S.O.S. I don’t understand how our fight starts,
Not enough to believe in love, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know where we’ve gone wrong

 

How long will it take to get used to me?
How long will it take to get used to me?
Don’t wait that long, won’t wait that long
No we won’t wait that long, don’t wait that long…

In the very earliest hours of dawn, I’d drop her off at her house. There was already light in the sky. A foggy haze, damp clover, the startled eyes of a deer, and me pulled off on the side of the back road, sitting behind the steering wheel listening to this song and wanting to cry for everything we did not know. The beauty of the morning made me ache. Have you ever been so happy, so bursting with joy, that it veers wildly off into sadness, skidding recklessly into a messy patch of tears, your body convulsing with passion and pain it hadn’t known needed emptying?

But the sun was coming up, the fog was burning off, the birds were starting to sing. The world was awakening like it always did, and one young man running off helplessly into a field wouldn’t ruffle feathers that simply flew higher. I pull the car back onto the road. The corn is just beginning its fountain-like ascent. Rows and rows of it, neatly parallel on mounds of dirt, run beside the car, waving their green strands in my wake. I am driving directly into the sun ~ into the summer ~ and not bothering to slow down.

Operator, the lines are down,
And I’m a traitor to a beautiful cause.
God made me to her own design
Bad planning, too many flaws
I’ve got too many flaws
Too many flaws…
 
Don’t wait that long, won’t wait that long,
No we won’t wait that long, don’t wait that long…
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29
May
2013
Tags: Gay, Music
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The Rainbow Connection

Apologies for interrupting this string of Ogunquit posts, but after a tornado warning and a magnificent rainbow, I was inspired to post this song, a favorite from my childhood. It’s from a time before the rainbow had any other connotation than a covenant with God, a sign of peace, a thing of beauty and wonder. As a gay man, I like what it’s come to represent too. But for me, it will always mean something much simpler, recalling to mind a time of innocence, and childhood.

Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what’s on the other side?
Rainbows are visions, but only illusions, and rainbows have nothing to hide.
So we’ve been told and some choose to believe it
I know they’re wrong, wait and see
Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection
The lovers, the dreamers, and me…

The childhood bedroom of a boy ~ a boy who loved unicorns and rainbows and books and flowers and Miss Piggy and Tinkerbell and everything that a little boy isn’t supposed to love. A record player that had long-ago worn out the soundtrack to ‘The Magic Garden’ and ‘The Rainbow Connection’, that played the music to which he danced and sang for the only unabashed years of his life. A feather caught on the wind. A windowsill holding a flowering Haworthia. A honeycomb Easter bunny decoration he could not quite bring himself to throw away. These were the things he loved. These were the things that would not hurt him.

Who said that every wish would be heard and answered when wished on the morning star?
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it. Look what it’s done so far…
What’s so amazing that keeps us star-gazing, and what do we think we might see?
Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection ~ the lovers, the dreamers, and me…

This is where laughter was born. This is where tears were shed. This is where pain was first felt. There was innocence and there was shame, there was life and there was death, there was the child and there was the man to come. But on this day, on the comfort of a fluffy cream-colored carpet, ‘The Rainbow Connection’ played on the record player, the black disc spinning round and round, the scratches unnoticed because he was still unbothered. He loved to hear Kermit sing. He wanted to be Miss Piggy, but his heart ached for Kermit – for the outcast, the different, the one who understood why it wasn’t easy being green, and how that shaded everything, and everyone, else around him. He knew the loneliness of being strange, of liking books better than baseball, plants better than playing, the beautiful better than the bodacious, and he knew he would never belong.

 

All of us under its spell, we know that it’s probably magic…
Have you been half-asleep and have you heard voices?
I’ve heard them calling my name.
Is this the sweet sound that calls the young sailor?
The voice might be one and the same.
I’ve heard it too many times to ignore it, it’s something that I’m supposed to be.
Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection ~ the lovers, the dreamers, and me…

Whenever he hears this song, it makes him cry. It brings him back to that room, where he is a boy again. It brings him back to being loved, but still being alone. It brings him back to where he pretends not to be, not to have ever been, and not to ever be again. Mostly, though, it makes him think of the perfect beauty of the rainbow, and the way that beauty never lasts. That’s what he will cry for tonight.

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27
May
2013
Tags: Music
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From One Ocean to 1000

A number of years ago, this is the song I listened to after a boyfriend broke up with me. It was for the best, and somewhere deep inside I knew it was the right thing to do, but at the time I couldn’t see beyond the pain of the moment, couldn’t see the courage to do it myself. There’s the pain that comes as a result of being let go, and the pain that comes from letting someone go. They are similar, but they are not the same. Hurt comes in all variations, measured in gradations too subtle and fine to measure or quantify. The only way to get over it is to let the pain wash over you, to let the oceans roll, and to weep all your salty tears.

 

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26
May
2013
Tags: Madonna, Music
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The Madonna Timeline: Song #93 – ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ ~ Fall 1986

{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}

Papa, I know you’re going to be upset,
Cause I was always your little girl,
But you should know by now
I’m not a baby…

1986 ~ When Mom told me and my brother that our paternal grandmother had died, Dad was already at work. Yes, the day after he found out his mother was dead, he had to go to work, because when you’re a doctor you can’t always call in sick or bereft, especially when another life hangs in the balance. All through the day I pondered if he was all right. Having never seen my father cry, I wondered if he would. When he returned from work, I watched him walk into the family room like usual. There was none of the excitement that occasionally accompanied him home, just a slightly downtrodden look to him. I wanted to go up to him and hug him, but he’d never been that kind of man, and in the strict Catholic upbringing we had, I wasn’t that kind of boy. Instead, I think I did my best and uttered a heartfelt ‘I’m sorry’ when I finally got over my shyness.

The next day, we took him to the airport to make the long journey back to Philippines to bury his mother. I remember he wanted gum for the plane rides, so his ears wouldn’t pop. I had never met his mother. In fact, the only grandparent I ever knew was my Mom’s mother. Because of that, I held her a little closer to my heart. Grandparents were a luxury to me, and I listened with envy to tales of other kids seeing their grandma or grandpa every weekend or, fantasy of fantasies, having them live in the same house. As much as I cherished solitude, I longed for a large family on the periphery.

We hugged him good-bye, drove back home, and began the long wait for him to return.

You always taught me right from wrong
I need your help, Daddy, please be strong
I may be young at heart
But I know what I’m saying…

On an afternoon a few days later, the sun came in through my brother’s bedroom window spotlighting the tiny particles of dust in the air. My brother was outside somewhere, and I was alone. I shuffled idly through his cassettes, moving them out of the direct sunlight. Madonna’s ‘True Blue’ was still in its case. (Amazing fact: my brother is the one who bought the ‘True Blue’ album first.) I popped it into the tape player and the opening strings sounded. I’d heard it on the radio, and started to sing along, still not putting together what all the words meant.

The one you warned me all about
The one you said I could do without
We’re in an awful mess
And I don’t mean maybe…
Please
Papa don’t preach, I’m in trouble deep
Papa don’t preach, I’ve been losing sleep
But I made up my mind, I’m keeping my baby.

I didn’t quite know what the song was about. I was only ten, and ten-year-olds in 1986 were far less advanced and worldly than ten-year-olds today. But I did sense the note of rebellion, the cries against a father’s advice, and for some reason I couldn’t listen anymore. I quickly stopped the tape. For the first time ever I silenced Madonna.

My thoughts returned to Dad, who was somewhere in the Philippines now, at the funeral of his mother, and hearing Madonna tell a fictitious father not to preach seemed disrespectful. The fierce but veiled protectiveness I have always felt towards my family reared its overcompensating (and often nonsensical) head. (I once took great offense at a girl who mentioned that the milk I brought in for lunch – the milk that was packed by my Mom – was made at her Dad’s plant, as if she was somehow attacking my Mom and taking away from something she had done for me.)

The slightest bit of talk-back-to-your-parents defiance seemed ill-timed then, and I shut off ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ for the rest of the week that Dad was away. It felt like I’d be jinxing his safe return if I played something like that. I can’t explain it. At least, I can’t explain it well. Who knows, maybe such childlike rules made a difference. More likely they were just a waste of worry and concern for a ten-year-old. Whatever the case, Dad returned from the Philippines intact. He brought us back the miniature amenities from the plane – the neatest gifts to us kids. I studied him from a slight distance, wondering how something like this would change him, but couldn’t discern any distinctive differences. He had always been hard to read, at least for me.

He says that he’s going to marry me
We can raise a little family
Maybe we’ll be all right, it’s a sacrifice…

When Mom was going to school at night, Dad would be the one to tuck us in. On one evening, when I was missing her, I had dabbed some of her perfume on my neck, and as he tucked me in he said I smelled nice. Out of everything I had done to try to get his attention over the years – and out of all the convoluted ways in which I would attempt to gain his love in the future – it was my mother’s perfume that elicited one of the moments of affection I remember most fondly.

My father never talked to me about girls (and certainly not about boys). In fact he never talked to me about much. He taught his greatest lessons through example. A hard worker. A loyal husband. A good provider. Love wasn’t expressed or talked about, and rarely shown. He was not raised that way. As a child, that’s sometimes tough to understand or take. As an adult, I can understand a little better.

But my friends keep telling me to give it up
Saying I’m too young, I oughta live it up
What I need right now is some good advice
Please…

In some ways, it’s rather befitting that this song from 1986’s ‘True Blue’ album should so remind me of my father. It was, according to some, a metaphor of Madonna’s own ambivalent relationship with her father, masked in a fictional narrative about a girl getting pregnant and seeking her father’s love and approval over scolding and punishment. She would more directly address the theme in 1989’s ‘Oh Father’, but back then ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ was a more-than-compelling study of parent-child relationships, and let’s face it ~ like it or not ~ they form the basis of the people we will one day become.

My rebellion wouldn’t begin for a few years. For now I was still under the authority and ambivalent auspices of my father. Defiance was too far ahead for me to realize its worth.

Daddy, daddy if you could only see
Just how good he’s been treating me
You’d give us your blessing right now
Cause we are in love
We are in love…

That year ~ 1986 ~ I loved my father as I always would ~ unconditionally, helplessly, trepidatiously, hesitantly, earnestly, wistfully, willfully, reservedly, all-encompassingly ~ and it was unthinkable, as much as I might sometimes disagree with him, to ever tell him not to preach. My life-long dance with Madonna, which had just begun, found us – for the moment – at opposite ends of the ballroom.

Yet I was drawn to the song. It haunted me, calling from the future ~ from a time when I finally realized that parents weren’t perfect, a time when parents let their children down, a time when a father could be ashamed of his son. But that time hadn’t quite arrived, and I unknowingly – blissfully – basked in the final vestiges of the love that childhood protected. At the very least, I would always have that. I wasn’t quite ready to let that go, because when you lose the love of a parent, there’s nothing that ever makes up for it.

Don’t you stop loving me, Daddy…
Song #93: ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ ~ Fall 1986
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19
May
2013
Tags: Music
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Could I Have This Dance?

Maybe it was the fact that I just watched ‘Brokeback Mountain’ again and have sad country songs running through my head, or maybe it was the memories of piano lessons coming back to haunt me, but this song popped into my head the other night, took up residence, and refused to let go. The only way to exorcise something of this dire ilk is to work through it in words.

It was one of the first ‘pop’ songs I learned on the piano, after graduating through the rudimentary building blocks of ‘Porcupines have prickly quills/ don’t go near their favorite hills/ if you go you’ll have bad luck/ cause you surely will get stuck.’ Compared to that, this was practically Beethoven.

I’ll always remember the song they were playing the first time we danced, and I knew
As we swayed to the music and held to each other, I fell I love with you
Could I have this dance for the rest of my life?
Would you be my partner every night?
When we’re together it feels so right,
Could I have this dance for the rest of my life?

I could only have been nine or ten years old, and could not have known the kind of promise a lifetime together meant. I could not have known romance, I could have only barely known longing, and the childhood innocence in which I was so blissfully unaware protected and shielded me from the precipice of pain that such a romantic love precariously perches upon.

I’ll always remember that magic moment when I held you close to me
As we moved together I knew forever, you’re all I’ll ever need.
Could I have this dance for the rest of my life?
Would you be my partner every night?
When we’re together it feels so right,
Could I have this dance for the rest of my life?

All I knew was the melancholic undertone of the music, the way love seemed somehow always tinged with sadness, and that if it wasn’t hard, if there weren’t obstacles, then something was wrong, something was missing. It was written then, before I even knew what romance was, that love would prove a difficult thing. But I also knew, deep down inside, that I wouldn’t have it any other way, and it would always be worth the heartache, worth the longing, worth the pain. Because on certain nights, there would be a dance like this, and as long as we had that dance, the world would be bearable.

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17
May
2013
Tags: Music
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The Music of Memory

Because some musical memories have not yet been written, or are in the very act of being written, and we do not yet know the outcome. Aside from the possible, but more rare, exception of scent, music is probably the most powerful trigger of a memory for me. All kinds have the capacity to rekindle a moment – from moody midnight music for the city to the modern day Muse, from songs that make you want to get into the Groove (Armada) to those that just make you want to ride a motorcycle with a mannequin strapped to your back.  There are songs for saying good-bye when you’re not quite ready, songs for a flaming September, and songs for growing up and letting go.

Songs of warped vanity obviously tickle my fancy, but songs reminding me of my friends were just as powerful. From the slightly country-tinged sounds of Patsy to the hair bands of the 80’s, from a simple pair of waltzes to Whitney Houston to Madonna, Madonna, Madonna… (and Madonna).

There is a song for every moment, whether that encompasses leaving on a jet plane, falling in love, living to tell, dancing the night away, a hazy shade of winter, or… Christmas – and songs for every season ~ fall, winter, spring, summer, more summer, and back to fall again.

This latest was recently recommended to me. I’m not sure what sort of memory it may one day invoke, what events may or may not transpire or be remembered at a later date – it’s all too soon to tell. But for the first time, you may be catching the chameleon in motion, in the midst of transformation, in the middle of the night…

I don’t know you but I want you
All the more for that
Words fall through me and always fool me
And I can’t react
And games that never amount
To more than they’re meant
Will play themselves out
Take this sinking boat and point it home
We’ve still got time
Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice
You’ve made it known
Falling slowly, eyes that know me
And I can’t go back
The moods that take me and erase me
And I’m painted black
Well, you have suffered enough
And warred with yourself
It’s time that you won
Take this sinking boat and point it home
We’ve still got time
Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice
You’ve made it known
Falling slowly sing your melody
I’ll sing along
I paid the cost too late
Now you’re gone…
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03
May
2013
Tags: Madonna, Music
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The Madonna Timeline: Song #92 ~ ‘Revolver’ – Summer 2009

{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}

One of two new original songs from Madonna‘s third Greatest Hits collection, ‘Celebration’ , ‘Revolver’ is instantly catchy, but just as instantly forgettable. Used to decent effect on the opening gun-filled salvo of her MDNA Tour, with a cameo by a ridiculous Lil Wayne (she should choose her collaborators more carefully), it’s mostly filler, put over by the gun-toting choreography and Madonna’s sassy strutting.

 

My love’s a revolver,
My sex is a killer
Do you wanna die happy?
Do you wanna die happy?

Songs like this remind me that not every Madonna piece must be personal and profound, not every one must tell a story, conjure a childhood memory, soar into the stratosphere, or revisit a broken heart. Even if without ‘Revolver’, there would be no ‘Celebration.’

 

Song #92: ‘Revolver’ – Summer 2009
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03
May
2013
Tags: Music
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A Pair of Midnight Waltzes

He remembers a memory, but it cannot be his, of practicing piano in the summer, while a lawnmower moaned in the distance, and some luckier boy than him was playing outside. A sharp scent of grass freshly-cut drifts in through the open door. It mingles with the stale smell of a dusty living room curtain. He loved the way the outside crept in to change the effects of the inside, and the smell of the house in the summer, especially at night, after it was shut closed again, filled him with  a cozy thrill.

A choice of two, for there is always a choice. And which will you choose? Fate and destiny, unfolding like the Chopin, or the random girl reunited with a one-night-stand? Beneath an almost-full pink moon, and the same starry sky…

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