2003-06-13

2003-06-13 - 7:16 a.m.

It's one of my long-held theories that if science would just find a way to clear my brain of all song lyrics, the entire fate of humanity would be altered. I woke up today with three songs in my mind simultaneously, so that the first seconds of consciousness were like this:

"I was sure growing up/I would live the life
my mother assumed I'd live/very Jewish
very middle class and very straight
where healthy men/stay healthy men
and marriages were long and great
I smile/I don't complain
I'm trying to keep sane/as the rules keep changing
families aren't what they were..."
--from the musical Falsettoes by William Finn

"River of orchids/winding away
want to walk into London on my hands some day..."
--XTC, "River of Orchids"

"When the rain is blowing on your face
and the whole world is on your case
I could offer you a warm embrace
to make you feel my love"
--Bob Dylan, as remade by Joan Osborn, "To Feel My Love"

As you can imagine, this was a lot to be thinking about at the same time that my radio was broadcasting an NPR interview with Al Sharpton about his bid for the Democratic nomination. In fact, it was so much that it took me a good ten minutes to fully wake up and figure out my name and purpose. (Apparently my purpose is to pleasure an overwhelmingly vocal five-pound kitty with scratches at all times of day.)

Now, if, instead, I did not wake up almost every silly morning with song lyrics in my brain, think of the things I could accomplish! Not just local, household items, like washing the three nights of dishes which currently are plotting my sink's overthrow, or finally vacuuming up all the plum-colored Linie 67 fur leftover from Wednesday's knitting, but big, important things. I could write the Great American post-modern novel, ensuring that Theodore Dreiser forever came off all university reading lists! I could bio-engineer the ultimate variant of protein-based grain to feed the starving! I could fly to D.C. and have a long, heartfelt and pissed off talk with Colin Powell about ethics and ethnicity. But no, instead I can recite every damn quaalude-inspired word of the David Bowie catalog from 1969-1982, including each syllable of "Yassassin" ("I'm not/ a moody guy/I walk/without a sound...") Great, Kaetchen. That's useful.

Comments: Speak your piece!

former / latter