Music is huge to me. Huge. It was the one thing my
broken family enjoyed together. We used to totally take up the dance
floor at weddings and large events. We'd even dance at home together.
And somehow, probably because there were three of us girls very close in
age, we ended up performing for the family and guests on a regular basis. Our “specialty” was “Let Me Entertain You”
from Gypsy...hmmm…thinking about that
now I find that spectacularly ironic, especially since I believe it was our
mother who taught us the song. Those of
you who know me personally will understand what I’m talking about. For those of you who don’t: stick around. I’m
sure that tale will be told!
Dad had two jukeboxes, one in the house and one in the garage in
back. Any given sunny day the garage door would be open, the music would
be blaring, and there'd be eight or ten kids in our driveway doing the New York
Hustle (one of the dances we learned in gym class in elementary school).
We'd have combined birthday parties for me and my two sisters, and we'd
spend weeks deciding which 45's we'd put in the jukebox for the party--we each
got to put in 20 (we had one left that we "shared"), and it took some
serious strategy to not waste a slot on a song you knew your sister was going
to use! We'd have anywhere from 20-40 kids in our house, "dancing the
night away." We were so innocent then. Of course, Dad would
reset the counter on the jukebox ahead of time and after the party would make
fun of us for wasting so much time choosing our music when we'd probably only
played six songs over and over for the night!
My family talked
in song; we still do. Any word that made any of us think of a song would
immediately start one of us singing, and the rest would join in (and with the
amount of music we listened to, any word could start us up).
Where some people categorize their life by relationships or what car they
were driving, mine is categorized by what music I was listening to. The
right song can bring me back to an exact moment in time.
Mix Tapes were my thing. I
would put a lot of time and thought into my tapes, whether for myself or
someone else. If I made one for you, I meant everything every single
song said. If I made one for you, there
was a reason behind it. Music says what
I can’t put into words – which is really kind of odd, because I’m never at a
loss for words! There was a time when
someone I considered special was sending me songs. Knowing how I am about sharing music
specifically with someone, I started “reading into it,” then (like I usually
do) I began second-guessing myself and wondered if anything specific was meant. I confided in my best friend. I didn't even get a chance to say anything
other than tell her about the songs and immediately she said, “Wow! Someone who
speaks your language!” She knows me. (I
love that.)
So you get that music is there for me. Another love of mine is writing. It’s only natural to combine the two. I started writing song lyrics in my journals. That was when my writing was only for me (yet
another, long story). I began rewriting
songs when I was working at a Sears Surplus Store when I was seventeen. Muzak was popular then, and I would start
(and finish) many rounds of “Name That Tune” to the Muzak on the slower days
(actually, every day). When I worked Customer Service, after dealing
with…customers I would imagine
scenarios in my head of how I would have liked to deal with them, rather than
how I had to deal with them. I would come up with “Closing Announcements
We Wish We Could Say” and post them behind the Customer Service desk or in the
back offices. (I’m sure my boss worried
that one day I would act on one of my ideas—especially since he knew how much I
loved speaking into the microphone!). I
graduated to writing song lyrics to sing with the music playing on the Muzak
system. Sort of a convoluted form of
karaoke. One of my first was a song called
“Sears Surplus” sung to the tune of Judy Garland’s “Chicago”. You’ll thank me for not forcing that on you.
Long story short (“Too Late!”), I now have two rather large
collections of skewed lyrics, or what I call: “If I Wrote That Song” and “My Response
to That Song”. I figure one day I will
piss a popular songwriter off pretty good, or maybe someone will offer me a
job!
Stay tuned…
My sister, my memories. Sometimes when she speaks her life, she also speaks mine to a point. It is surreal. Her memories are MUCH more prevalent than my own. But my feelings of nostalgia are overwhelming when I read of her memories that include me. I like being reminded of the parts of my childhood which were truly "good stuff." I know that some day, I'll be reading about the "not-so-good-stuff" but at the same time, her writing will invoke emotions and memories of days gone by. Reading her writings gives me a feeling of "Hey, I was here."
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