Tuesday, July 25, 2000

Music I Play to Torture Myself

The power of the senses upon my memory never ceases to fill me with wonder. Lots of folks have memories -- pleasant or otherwise -- associated with certain fragrances, a fragment of music or other sound, the sight of a particular totem or motif that recalls a definite place and time. For me, it's generally clothing and music. I'll be digging through my closet and run across the sweatshirt I purchased at Kennedy Airport because I was freezing and my flight was delayed eight hours and I can recall with remarkable clarity the grim purpose that took me to New York that November in the first place.

But mostly, it's music. Now, in the movies, when the hero or heroine hears a favorite old song and is transported to another time, another place, it's generally something rather high-toned. A bit of Gershwin, perhaps, whisks Ingrid Bergman back to a sidewalk cafe in Paris. In yet another needless demonstration that my life is nothing like the movies, tonight the song was Animotion's Obsession (damn you, Y98 "Eighties at Eight"), and in a flash, it's 1985 and I am lying on a blanket in the back of Roger's pickup truck, gazing at the full moon and believing I was blissfully and enduringly happy.

There is, in my record collection (weighted though it is toward showtunes and the predictable disco chart hits), a particular genre commonly referred to as "Music I Play to Torture Myself." This is the music of my memories, and I can quickly locate the few tracks necessary to delineate the phases of my all-too-brief relationship with Roger.

Obsession, of course. How many romances were launched or consumated to the melodies of one-hit "wonders"? Duran Duran, because for about four months, we were the Wild Boys. And, finally, Styx. The Best of Times? For a while, at least. But at last, plaintively, Don't Let It End.

I am so not Ingrid Bergman. It is painfully clear that I am, in fact, Molly Ringwald in every John Hughes movie ever made.