reading my songs

reading my songs like a book...while reading the book, the song reader.  just thoughts as i bump along in this shuttle van on the way to the mpls airport, reading my book & listening to the radio on my earphones.  funny thing, in this area where i grew up,  i noticed while driving my parents’ car around and punching the scan button the radio dial, that most the radio stations seemed to be stuck on 80’s music.  Just as if time stood still, nothing  changed, from the day i left the nest, moved on to college and entering the “real world”.  as if we should still be wearing ripped-at-the-shoulder, Flashdance style sweatshirts and legwarmers and rocking out to def leppard and john cougar mellencamp.   this very music that shaped my coming-of-age years, those ryhythms & lyrics that somehow subconsciously shaped how i felt about the autopilot drama i was living out. meaning,  i just lived. not thinking about what i was doing or why i was doing it, not analyzing whether i was really being true to myself or not, but just doing.  i could list all these songs if i’d been crazy enough to jot them down while steering, but can only throw out examples.  like..cruel summer…tainted love...little pink houses….king of pain...

 

and here’s a funny one, i walked into a shiny silver denny’s diner just now to use the bathroom, was about to die from too much coffee before that long road trip...and i’m immediately hit with the song “hungry like the wolf” by duran duran playing quite loudly on the restaurant’s loudspeakers.  even in the bathroom.  the place looked like a real old-timey diner, with tables scattered around, filled up with older farmer-looking gentlemen with seed caps (baseball caps advertizing seed companies and other farm-related gunk, for the non-Midwestern folk out there) as well as a shiny silver bar, complete with some comfortable-looking “regulars” leaned over their eggs, or giving their orders to the portly oldish woman in a brown uniform, jotting down notes on her menu pad, i’ll bet she even had a pencil behind her ear.  

anyway..where was i?

i love the moment of take-off.  from bumping along endlessly past all the airport gates, those slow bumps lulling me to sleep with nothing of interest to look at out my window, to that sudden stop at the edge of the take-off runway. that moment of anitcipation, the stillness, as suddenly the jets roar up, that feeling of being pressurized, a couple moments to watch another jet make its descent and land, and then, bam. bodies flatten against our seats, heads back, as we’re whisked forward with such a rush of power that i almost feel like i’m already in the air. moving faster and faster down the runway, the  bumps now coming so fast they feel like my heart beating faster and faster.  enjoying the feeling of abandon, loss of control, giving in the power of the plane. no turning back, as the nose goes up and that sudden rush of air beneath the plane that can make my stomach jump but i keep breathing and calming myself, as to not freak out over the little air bumps along the way.  love the sights out the window…

and soon we’re cruising at 35,000 feet and it’s no big deal anymore,  but i’m happy i have a window seat.  the clouds look so cool down there…

so i’m at the part of my book now, where the older sister, the song reader, has come to the point of losing her mind in the process of helping others.  so dedicated to helping others figure out their lives, for free, usuallly, just an obsessive answer to her calling , her giftedness, while keeping her day job as a waitress in the small, gossipy-town’s diner.  

thinking about the idea of caregiver’s burnout.  giving to others, self-sacrificing to the point of their own demise, their own leap into mental illness themselves.  that’s what happens in my book, and it makes me think.  is that also what can happen when you spend your entire life pleasing others, helping others, giving up your window seat to some stranger who asks you to switch seats even though you’d specifically requested a window seat when ordering your tickets?  (that didn’t happen to me, but to my mom. she gave up her seat and then complained to me about it, saying how mad she was at that young woman who had the audacity (the healthy assertiveness, really) to politely state her preferences, if it was ok..)  or to agree to order the spinach alfredo at the restaurant just  because your sister recommended it so that you can stroke her ego when it gives her the opportunity to share her great knowledge of the great health benefits of spinach even if you secretly hate spinach with a passion?  (i happen to really like spinach, but just an example..)

back to my book. it inspires me in many ways.

such as music. growing up, we only heard my parents play classical music in our house, good formal, sit-up-straight, don't-get-emotional, steady, mathematical rhythms & intellectual music theory. nice, and allowed some pleasant emotions in, but nothing disturbing or full of angst, like the popular music we "youngens" prefered back then. even in church, it was nothing but boring, slow hymns sung to a loud organ in the back. once i remember my mom commenting on some guest soloist who came to church and sang something "all emotional, like he was singing a love song or something", she described it, curling up her nose as if she were describing something extremely vile, grotesque, even immoral, or while picking up something smelly with her fingertips. oh no, church music was never allowed to have any passion in it. neither was our family life. this was the tone, the musical background, that guided most of my decisions in life. be practical. sensible. don't let any passion in. or out.

based on where i am now, this would be good advice. keep out the music, the good stuff, anyway, because it will just bring out the longings for things i cannot have, unsensible things, things i never saw modeled in my dysfunctional family so therefore they wouldn't fit the mold. i am just a product of the mold, right? sounds kinda moldy to me.

and that's it for now.  just thoughts on music, and flying.