Nostalgic for my music

I’m getting old. You know how I know?

You might think it’s because my brother, Tom, who’s only 14 months older than me, just turned 48. Once he has a birthday, there’s no avoiding mine two months later. I’m on deck to be 47, which I couldn’t do until he vacated that spot. Gee thanks for moving over, Tom. But that’s not how I know I’m getting old.

You might think it’s because I have offspring heading off to college in the Fall. I am officially attending Parents’ Weekend in October, and guess what? I’m the parent, not the student. But that’s not how I know I’m getting old.

You might think it’s because I have a bridge in my mouth, I like to play Scrabble, and going to bed early on a Saturday night is my idea of good times! But that’s not it either.

I know I’m getting old because of the music.

It was a two-part realization. First, a couple of weeks ago, my husband and I watched the Grammys on TV.

“Who are these people?” I kept asking. “Fergie? Wasn’t she married to Prince Andrew? Wasn't she buddies with Diana? When did she start singing?”

My husband, who is more up on music because he’s practically a baby compared to me (he’s 45), and because he subscribes to Sirius radio, rolled his eyes. “Not that Fergie. This one’s with the Black-Eyed Peas.”

Never heard of them. Gnarls Barkley either. Or Buckcherry. But they were big at the Grammys.

What happened to all the good music, I wondered? The cool music? The party music? Music I’ve heard of?

I’ll tell you where. It resides in my house, in a drawer filled with cassette tapes, which I myself recorded from albums. Vinyl albums. The kind we listened to “back in the day”, as my kids like to say. We had milk crates full of them, and carted them around from city to city. Thus part 2 of the realization that I was getting old. Because of the music in a drawer in my house.

I found the tapes when I was in the midst of an organizational crisis. I had decided, finally, to purge my house of junk. That New York Times Magazine from April 2005? Never gonna read it, it’s gone! That pink cashmere sweater, the one I bought on sale at Talbots in 1996, with the big moth hole in the front? It’s history. The Christmas cards from 2004 with the pictures of smiling people I haven’t seen or spoken to in 16 years? Fireplace.

But then I opened that drawer, the one that contains my youth. Notice I say “contains”, as in present tense. I can’t throw them out. The cassette tape with Culture Club (Colour by Numbers) on one side and Eurythmics (Touch) on the other side. How I adored the make-up! The hair! It was 1983 and I was fresh out of college. I lived in a lovely apartment in Charlestown, right across the river from Boston, right on the real Bunker Hill. I was living with my friends Ackie, Dottie and Tavs, and we all had paraprofessional jobs of one kind or another and cute post-college boyfriends. We wore power suits with silk ribbons around the collars of our standard-issue oxford-cloth blouses, and walked across the Charlestown bridge to work, wearing sneakers and sweatsocks over our nylons, and carried our heels in our briefcases. There was no office work in those briefcases. Just our heels, and the occasional sandwich for when we were feeling too poor to buy lunch downtown.

Ackie, Tavs and I went to Smith together. Ackie and I are still good friends, though we live 600 miles apart and only see each other every couple of years. She married a terrific guy from Harvard Business School and they have two darling kids.

I kept in touch with Tavs until she died about ten years ago, after she fell down the stairs in her own house. She had a husband whom I never did meet, and two little children. The last time I saw her was probably at Ackie’s wedding in 1988, a few months after my own wedding. The last time I ever spoke to her was a few months before she died, when she sounded troubled and needed a friend. The next thing I heard about her, she was dead.

Dottie I met through Tavs. Dottie was somehow related to McGeorge Bundy. When she told me she was related to McGeorge Bundy, I tried to act appropriately impressed, even though I had not the slightest clue who this McGeorge Bundy fellow was. (He was National Security Advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and if I had read David Halberstam’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Best and the Brightest in college like I was supposed to, I would have known that and I’m sure I would have acted far more impressed than I did at the time. As it was, however, I could only wonder what kind of first name was “McGeorge” anyway?) I promptly lost touch with Dottie after I left Boston in 1984, but I heard she married Steve, the guy she was dating that year. We all lived together in 1983 and part of 1984, when I abandoned them to return to Ohio and enroll in law school.

Back to the music. Here’s the tape of Talking Heads (Stop Making Sense), with Tears For Fears (The Hurting) on the flipside. How appropriate that I copied these albums to cassette when I was in law school, circa 1984. Who could make sense out of the Rule Against Perpetuities or riparian water rights? I can still hear David Byrne’s plaintive (or was it plaintiff?) voice crooning This is not my beautiful house/This is not my beautiful wife! as he gyrated around the stage in his Big Suit.

And Tears For Fears, well let me just say I could relate to The Hurting every time Professor Fink (I’m not kidding, that was his name), used the Socratic Method on me, admonishing me to articulate some particularly arcane point of civil procedure. The words I dreaded in that class come back to haunt me as I read through the songs handwritten in blue ink on the cassette label by a much younger me: So what do you think Miss Boniface? In case you’re curious, no, I did not have my hand up. From “The Hurting”:

Is it an horrific dream/Am I sinking fast/Could a person be so mean/As to laugh and laugh/Could you ease my load/Could you ease my pain/Could you please explain/The hurting.

Maybe the lead singer went to law school too. And had Professor Fink.

Oh, and here’s one of my all-time favorites! Linda Ronstadt, “Heart Like a Wheel” on Side A, and “Hasten Down the Wind” on Side B. These are of even earlier vintage, had to be 1975 or 1976. I was in high school and wallowed in every song on these albums. With all the passion of a lovesick teenager, I heard Linda serenading my feelings about boys I adored but who didn’t know I existed. Songs like Willin’. When Will I Be Loved? Faithless Love. And those gorgeous Karla Bonoff ballads, If He's Ever Near. Lose Again. And of course the haunting but timeless classic, Someone to Lay Down Beside Me. I even bought the Karla Bonoff album with the same songs so I could compare Karla's voice with Linda's. Somehow I even related to Dark End of the Street:

At the dark end of the street/That’s where we always meet/And in shadows/Where we don’t belong/Living in darkness/To hide our wrong

As if I had some secret lover at the tender age of 15. I didn’t have any boyfriends but in my heart I loved a boy named Bob Ficarelli. He was the epitome of tall, dark and handsome, and I got dizzy every time I laid eyes on him. He was Michaelangelo’s David, he was an angel by Raphael, he was a flawless specimen of a guy who was way out of my league. And he was going steady with a girl named Shirley who wore pale blue eyeshadow and pale blue mascara, and she and Bob would wear pale blue turtlenecks to school on the same day. She wore pale blue nail polish, and had a pre-engagement ring on her dainty finger, and perfect straight black hair down to her impossibly tiny waist. Let me tell you, I could not compete with that. But one day my heart went all aflutter when Bob came up to me, ME! standing near my locker and asked if my Dad was a doctor. My heart was in my throat, my mouth was bone dry, and I guess I croaked out a shaky “yes,” and he told me my father delivered him, as in, his mother was pregnant, and my Dad was her doctor, and suddenly, I had this intimate personal connection with Bob Ficarelli that Shirley could never match.

Yeah, I wished. We both smiled, yeah that was weird, we said, and off he went. I don’t think we ever shared another moment, or even exchanged words, and the next year he wasn’t at my school anymore. I heard he dropped out, but wherever he went, I never did see him again.

Sigh.....

And here’s a soulful one, a tape with Rickie Lee Jones (Flying Cowboys), on one side, for when I was feeling bluesy, and Phoebe Snow (Something Real), on the other side, for when I was feeling poetic.

And what about this one, with Grace Jones (Inside Story) on Side A, accompanied on Side B by The The (Soul Mining)! These were both for when I was feeling cutting edge. I remember playing The The’s Uncertain Smile over and over and over and felt so superior to all those poor slobs who had never heard of them. I can still hear Matt Johnson’s fingers work their magic on the piano…..followed by this:

Peeling the skin back from my eyes/I felt surprised/That the time on the clock was the time/I usually retired/To the place where I clear my head of you/But just for today/I think I’ll lie here and dream of you…

So romantic! OK, so the rest of the lyrics indicate a rather disturbing stalker-like obsession with an old girlfriend. Nonetheless, the emotion behind it had me hooked. In 1985, I went on a date with some loser who lived in the adjoining duplex and made him listen to my legal store-bought tape of Soul Mining. We sat in his Honda Civic hatchback on a dark street with the sound cranked as loud as it could go. I was transported (anything to get away from that guy), and when he wanted to borrow the tape I said OK, thinking at least he had some appreciation for great music. I wouldn’t go out with him again, but whenever I ran into him on our mutual front porch I'd ask him for the tape back and he'd feign ignorance. I let it go. I figured at least I had improved his lot in life by exposing him to Uncertain Smile.

And here’s a bizarre one, from 1983 I think: George Winston with Windham Hill on Side A, and the Soundtrack from the movie “Diva” on Side B. Side A was for when I was feeling mellow. And Side B, well who could forget the gorgeous Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez rendition of the aria from La Wally, while her obsessed fan is pursued by two Parisian mob killers? It was all very high culture and new wave at the same time. And it’s the only opera I can recognize even now. I should go rent the DVD. Though chances of finding a copy in Suburbia are slim.

I haven’t even mentioned some of the other great ones—English Beat, Thomas Dolby, The Cure, New Order, Haircut 100, Echo & The Bunnymen, Joan Armatrading, B-52’s, Carly Simon, Iggy Popp—did I really own all those albums? Someone must have. All this copying onto cassette tapes was more than a decade before the advent of Napster and the age of the illegal download. You or a willing accomplice had to have the goods in your possession at least, not to mention some sort of cassette deck to do the taping. Low technology, but it worked for us.

I’d listen to the music on my walkman walking across the bridge from Charlestown to the North End. I blasted it on the speakers at our Saturnalia party on December 17, 1983, the one where all the dancing caused a cascade of debris onto the washing machine on the floor below us. And I listened to the same music for hours on trains all across Europe, where I spent two months in the Spring daydreaming and wandering around with my backpack before I settled into law school in 1984.

So throwing these old cassettes away is going to be tough. I could keep them if they actually worked. The tapes are so old they either won’t advance, or the tape gets all mangled by the machine. A few of them produce sound, but I guess the ravages of time that show in the occasional wrinkle on my body have affected them as well. Neither one of us plays like we used to.

Yeah. We used to party like it’s 1999 (Prince, 1982).

I know. I need to move on. I need to embrace Fergie, Timbaland, Nelly. I did see a Fergie video called “Glamorous” on TV the other day, and I must admit, she was quite impressive (an expression I never would have used back when I was plugged in). But then again, who is Fergie, really, without Diana?

Carbon Credits=Hypocrisy

There's something I don't get. Putting aside the whole global warming controversy, what's the deal with carbon credits? First I read that the Oscars, no doubt owing to its love-fest with Al Gore, "went green" by purchasing carbon credits. In other words, as I understand it, the production made a huge carbon footprint, so to offset the Oscars' contribution to global warming, they paid money. So if you have enough money it's OK to have a big carbon footprint?

Then yesterday I heard John Edwards on the radio saying it's OK he lives in a 10,000 square foot house that uses tons of energy because they offset their gargantuan carbon footprint by purchasing carbon credits.

I'm no scientist. But it seems to me this is a little like the rich people in the civil war paying money so a poor person can fight in their place. So if you're rich you can do whatever you want, even if it results in the death of a poor person (in the civil war), or contributes to the melting of the polar ice caps, as long as you can pay money to assuage your responsibility and/or guilt.

Why aren't all the liberals up in arms about this? I haven't seen the question mentioned anywhere. If people were really concerned about global warming, they would lead by example. Instead they want to force the rest of us to clean up our acts, unless of course we have the cash to buy a carbon credit, putting the burden on everybody else to do something about it.

For the record, I really don't care what house John Edwards, or Al Gore, or anybody else lives in. They probably provide lots of jobs for the local economy by having such high living standards. But it's the pontificating that irritates me. It's the "do as I say, not as I do" mentality. There's always an excuse for why it's OK for them & not for the rest of us. It's like when Robert Redford a few years ago came out bashing SUV owners for the irresponsibility of using gas guzzlers. When it was pointed out that he himself drove one, his response was "Well, I need one. I live on a ranch", or some such tripe. (I "need" one too: I have 4 kids with lots of stuff that has to be carted from point A to point B. And I feel safer driving one with all the numbskulls on the road out here in Suburbia. Is Robert Redford going to defend my right to drive one? I doubt it. I wonder how many carbon credits he buys every year...)

Dentist

I had a Seinfeldish experience today. Even as I type my upper lip is still numb but I wanted to get this down while the pain was still fresh in my memory. Actually there wasn't that much pain. Just the pinch of the novocaine, which I hate but always get because I figure the potential pain from having an exposed nerve drilled is probably worse.

So anyway, I had this tiny cavity and my dentist and his lovely assistant, whom I have known and trusted my enamel with for years, were working me over. That little gold drill was going "zzzZZZZZZ!!!!!" and water was spraying all over my face...you know the drill (no pun intended.) Let's just say that even though I had plenty of novocaine, I felt tense. My sweaty palms squeezed the tissue they gave me and my ankles were frozen into a prepare-to-flee position. There is the usual banter going on between Dr. Dentist and Ms. Assistant, which is light and pleasant. Then, out of nowhere, some random person pops her head in the room and starts blathering on about a speeding ticket she received, how many points were going on her record, what fine she had to pay, blah blah blah. She wouldn't shut the hell up and she had nothing whatsoever to do with the procedure going on inside my mouth.

I felt tense. More tense. Who are you and what are you doing in this room while I'm having this thing done to my gums and teeth and I'm sure any second now I'm going to jump out of this chair when the drill hits my nerve because this time I'm almost positive the dentist didn't give me enough novocaine....

Then Miss Invade-the-Patient's-Privacy-Blabbermouth left. I felt a brief respite. Until she returned two seconds later to keep us posted about her traffic ticket problems. Blah Blah Blah!!! I could hardly believe it. I mean where did she think she was anyway? The grocery store check-out line?

My tenseness at this point must have become pretty obvious. Dr. Dentist lifted the drill and asked in his gentle concerned manner, "Are you OK?"

I mumbled forcefully, my mouth, stuffed with cotton and feeling the size of a grapefruit, and pointed at the interloper: "Whaf's fee booing here?"

The three of them looked at me. "What? Who?"

"Fur!!" I exclaimed, pointing again at the random stranger. "Fuzz fee meed to pee here?"

Dr. Dentist realized the problem and told her to get lost. "Sorry about that," he said. "She's a temp." I tried to explain (again, not very coherently with my mouth in its current state) that I'm not really interested in her personal life. He said some people like having the banter because it soothes them. I said I didn't mind HIS banter or his assistant's banter while they worked. I know them. I like them. Their banter interests me. But the banter of a random stranger in the room when I'm feeling, well, vulnerable is a good word, is not welcome. I mean I realize the rooms are only semi-private with openings in one wall so the dentist can step in and out without the inconvenience of opening a door, but really folks. Isn't there some tiny expectation of privacy, that only the people that really need to see you squirm are the only ones in there?

Dr. Dentist said he understands. I'm being drilled, and trying to get to "that place" where I feel comfortable, and this stranger comes in and wrecks it. EXACTLY! Then he said she's temped for them a few times and they liked her because she was so friendly with staff, but the problem was, she's so friendly with the staff! (After all, she was telling them, not me, about her traffic ticket woes.)

I hate confrontation. Truth be told, my heart was pounding, what with the drill on top of the confrontation. I basically told someone to her face that she was annoying me and to get the hell out. Plus it wasn't my job to tell her to get the hell out, was it? But if it was your office and your employee was irritating the hell out of a long-standing patient whose business also includes that of her husband and four kids, wouldn't you want to know? He actually did seem appreciative that I spoke up.

Maybe it's just me, but lots of doctor's offices seem to need a course in basic courtesy. There are the ones that schedule three and four appointments at the same time (so the good doctor doesn't have to wait...but what about the patient? You know, the one who's paying?) And lately everybody wants to call me "Mom" if it's an appointment involving my kids. Even if my kid is on the other side of the room playing a video game and I come to the desk with an insurance question, it's "What kind of insurance do you have Mom?" I've told people in the orthodontist office, the pediatrician's office and the ophthalmologist's office "Please don't call me 'Mom'". Admittedly it's usually the technician or the nurse or some other paraprofessional. But sometimes it's the doctor himself (I've never had a female doctor address me as 'Mom'), and one time one of them actually said "Well what should I call you?"

Well Duh!! I know this is hard Dr. Dufus, but look down. You have the chart in front of you. You can call me Julie, or you can call me Mrs. (insert my last name here). But don't call me 'Mom'. I know I have a lot of kids but I'm pretty sure you're not one of them.

The novocaine is wearing off now and surprisingly I don't have a pounding headache. Maybe that's because I vented off my tension right here, for your reading pleasure. Thanks. I feel better now.