a little story 'bout the 'Mac

I stated this blog as an outlet for all the stories of my songs. My best friend gave me the idea… she said something like “you have a story for every song you hear. You should write them all down.” So several years ago, I started doing just that. Eventually I moved them over to public web format. I started writing all the memories associated with all the songs to the soundtrack of my life. Hence the memories in auralmemories.

Some songs have such a strong hold on my hippocampus that it’s almost as if I time travel. I can feel my posture and mood change, my mind reverts back to 22 or 4 or 12 and I am right where I was when this or that song imprinted itself upon me. I think for other people this happens with other things… maybe with foodies; they taste something and they are back where they were the first time they had fois gras, or maybe a fisherman finds himself back beside his father as a child whenever he catches a certain type of bass. Me, when I hear certain songs, I time travel. Not all the memories are good, obviously. There are certain songs that are tied so intensely to certain people or events that they are on my ipod/spotify permanent ban list. There are some songs that invoke such a strong reaction from me that I know better to listen to them in public, lest I cry for joy or find myself wiggling and dancing in my seat, not unlike having a seizure. (I had to create a special playlist on my spotify for such songs, because I knew if they ever popped up on my list, they would basically cause me to embarrass myself in public.)

A couple years ago I made the switch from Song Stories to show reviews. Sometimes other editorial nonsense re: my depression pops up (one year ago today.. perhaps I have a pattern?), but otherwise, it would appear I have all but dismissed the stories of the songs. And I find myself more and more drawn to these stories. Perhaps it’s because I have been spending so much time compiling my memoirs into a novel and so many of these song-stories comprise so much of the tale that I find myself compulsively writing this to you now.

This morning was the first morning this season I have been able to comfortably wear a skirt and not feel like I am freezing to death. Recent health issues have found me at my all time lowest weight and struggling with anemia. Basically I am freezing. Always. The forecast called for mid to upper 90s today in the triangle, so I decided I would struggle through the first few hours of the day to revel in the heat this afternoon on my daily routine of sitting outside Morning Times with a good puzzle and a great coffee drink and feeling one of my favorite feelings in the world… Sweat. I never get to sweat. Even when I was heavier, I was always cold-natured. And now, as a frighteningly underweight mid 30s gal, I never get to sweat (and no. I don’t exercise. I can’t and I won’t... Not getting into that.) So I adore summertime. I adore humidity and direct sunlight. I’ve had my family and certain friends joke that I am like a cat, I will always find the place to sit and be where there is one blazing hot beam of sunlight directly on me. Wonderful!!! The best days are when I am wearing a skirt, blasting my headphones and I’m in a good groove on a challenging puzzle then… victory…! That first roll of sweat that runs from behind my crossed knee down my leg. Sublime. …Yeah… I’m weird.

How this is related: my first spring away at college. I was homesick as it was, I was sick of cold as well. I hate winter. I will most likely when I reach the appropriate age, be one of those old folks that retire to Florida, if not further south. I despise being cold. So somewhere in the spring of my freshman year, I was 16 (yes, I was early) and I had discovered a fabulous new distraction – the World Wide Web! My parents had just signed up for AOL at the house. It was baffling to me. When I got back to school after Christmas break, I had found it necessary to use one of the many computer labs on campus for a paper. (This was before anyone had personal computers, really. I think there was one girl in our entire dorm that has a desktop.) As I typed up my paper, I realized there was a girl beside me using some sort of text only program to seemingly chat with someone. She explained it to me and I started using it myself. I can’t even begin to remember what it was called, I am pretty sure it was some infant stage of mIRC, completely DOS based and was only reachable with a series of typed commands that ended with typing in “xyzzy”… (this was ‘95/’96, btw.) So that’s what I called it…. xyzzy.(the current net has little resources on this, but i know it existed. the only things popping up with a xyzzy google search now has something to do with minecraft?)

For me; struggling with homesickness, self image issues, blossoming mental issues; this chat-world was a divine escape. (This all coincides with the basis for a big part of my memoirs, so I won’t go too in depth because I want you all to read my book one day.) But what had happened was this… the first boy I ever loved, I never met. I’ve told the story here before,which you can read as a summation to the experiences that lead to these memories.

Basically in between classes, I would I would sit in the labs and kill time on this chat program, talking about U2 or books or whatever… waiting for and subsequently responding to his emails. We would write novellas. I printed every email. They were like sacred texts to me. I would carry them around with me and re-read them over and over, about how he had gone to work as a waiter after class and came home to listen to Fugazi (*swoon*) or describe the sandwich he had for lunch… (*sigh!*)… we were disgustingly smitten with each other. It wasn’t until weeks into it all that I ever even saw a photo of him, albeit pixilated and almost inscrutable. I didn’t even care. He was a shaggy, blonde adorable blue eyed California boy with dimples… way out of my league, but it never even occurred to me that it would be an issue. We made plans to run away together every other day…. Even now, 20 something years later, I wouldn’t know him if he slapped me in the face. But that love, it was one of the first and truest things I’d ever felt in my life. It’s the most pure and perfect memory of love that I have, it’s the basis for all things. Nothing can touch it, nothing will erase it. Surely by now he’s married with a brood of children. I hope that he is, I send him all my love and blessings… he gave me the greatest story I know to tell.

So how this is all related to Fleetwood Mac.

My parents gave me a very limited budget. I had a 10 meal, meal plan for each week and I was given an allowance of $20 a week. As a smoker and coffee addict (some things never change), this was a difficult lifestyle. But I managed. I traded cds with the local shop, CD Alley (doesn't appear this still exists in Greenville. Sad.) Somehow, somewhere in there, I found myself with a used copy of Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits… the green album. And I played the hell out of it. Not entirely sure why, but something about it resonated with me. Some sort of passion or serenity or wispy loveliness. I would sit in the lab, for hours, writing him novella emails about my roommate or the sunlight on my shoulders or whatever it happened to be at the time and “Sara” would be blasting in my ear holes and I was the happiest I had ever been in my thus short life. He and I would email each other “suggested listening” for our emails… James Taylor, Nat king Cole, stuff like that. I think I remember once telling him to listen to “Everywhere” for one such email. When I hear those first twinkly notes… that little bit of magic swirling around before the melody starts, I always think of him.

When I hear certain songs from this album, I am 17ish, I am fat and awkward and I don’t care because I am loved by a boy I’ll never meet and he cares what I had for lunch and what shoes I’m wearing today. Sometimes when I get discouraged about never finding “the love of my life” or that the right person isn’t out there for me, I remember this boy and I hear the right Fleetwood Mac song and I am blissfully ignorant of the pain to come and anything is possible.

I don’t listen to this album too much because sometimes that level of bittersweet is overbearing. But this morning, I am indulging myself. I’m letting myself remember and just letting it be what it was. A quirky girl and a sweet, gentle boy falling in love to the soundtrack to smooth 70s soft rock on opposite sides of the country.

all my love to you, wherever you are, kid.

The Reverend Horton Heat - In Your Wildest Dreams

Earlier drafts and planning stages of this blog was a sort of retelling of the many loves in my life via “our songs”… while that is certainly something that has seemed to occur many times through my posting, I also felt it was really important to include stories about my family and childhood as well. So I did. But the awkward fact remains that the majority of these posts are about men from my past whom I have had unresolved crushes on or dated or whatnot. I’m trying to break them up, but I wonder/worry if it’s not becoming entirely too Oedipal that I post one blog about some guy I used to date and then a post right after about my dad.

I was a freshman at ECU. Around this time, I had discovered the internet. This was back when you paid by the minute for AOL and dad would flip when he got $200 or $300 bills. I would chat with complete strangers about Jane Eyre and U2 and fart noises, who knows what 17 year old kids did back then. (Who knows what they do now?) I would chit chat for a minute or two about nothing, write down screen names and when I got back to ECU, I would open up email/pen pal correspondences. It was a lot of fun! I kept up with a lot of these kids for years because of it. One such person was a boy named Mike from Huntington Beach, California; a shaggy blonde photographer/skateboarder.

I had this great idea once, or twice, Or twelve different ideas including novels, essays or even screenplays based on this one most profoundly important statement of my whole life... (Maybe after all these years and all these unfinished ideas and poems and songs and stories can just be summarized in one stupid little blog post and it can be put away for good?) This is the thing that I feel defines so much of who I am and what I believe in this world: I never met the first boy I ever loved.

Back then (1995/1996) you had very limited options for web access. AOL and maybe Prodigy? It was such an abstract and exciting concept for me, (well for everyone when it first started happening.) I used AOL at home, (when home,) and some freaky ancient DOS based chat program in the labs at school (when at school). I can’t really remember talking to him on AOL, but I remember and still have the first email I sent him from school. And I have every email that happened after, of which there are hundreds. (One of my ideas was to simply collect all these emails and just stick them in a notebook and give it to a publisher. Who knows, maybe one day I will.) The emails were silly getting to know you “this is my life” emails for a week or so, then suddenly they were novellas. Straight Novels. Hundreds of pages several times a day. Filled with craving for each other’s brains. We were ridiculous. We were smitten. We told each other about our whole days and our whole hearts. I would skip class to write him. He would skip work to email me. The most romantic and beautiful thing of my life happened because of this boy. (I say boy, I was 17 at the time, and he was 18.)

This sterile email conversation plowed along full steam for weeks; months. Valentine’s Day was coming up and I don’t remember if I asked outright if anything would be coming my way, or if I just kept my wishes secret and hoped for the best. But what happened turned into something much more magical than anything I could have ever expected. It was the first day in weeks we hadn’t “spoken”. We had not communicated in any way other than the very first brief chat and the emails that followed, yet we called each other boyfriend/girlfriend. It was my first full day or not speaking to my first real boyfriend. As the day trudged on and after my 5th trip to the computer lab to check emails as well as checking the mailbox outside our dorm room and seeing nothing, I resigned myself to lying around on my bed feeling pathetic and weepy and eating pudding cups, resisting the urge to cry.

Sometime around 7pm, as my roommate and I were lying around watching something like PCU for the 8,000th time the phone rings. I jump and grab it. I called out a “hello” and heard nothing. My heart flipped. I knew it was him. I walked out the door and sat on the ground in front of our door. “Hello? Mike?” and suddenly the music. He played this song, start to finish, saying nothing. And when it was over, he just... hung up. I sat splayed on the ground, panting, my heart beating so fast it was like a hum. I whispered his name over and over again, wishing he hadn’t hung up; praying he hadn’t. I sat there for quite a while with the beeping receiver in my hand, shell shocked. The best part of it all was the emails we sent to each other the next day. He told me all about how nervous and excited he was all day because he knew what he was going to do. I told him about how much I tortured myself with anticipation and expectation. He told me how his heart raged when he heard my voice for the first time. I told him about how there was no more exceptionally perfect gift he could give me other than music.

It was only a few weeks later that we spoke to each other on the phone for the first time. I sang Alanis Morrissette to him. He sang The Cure to me (note: both of these songs are obviously ruined for me). I read him my poetry, he described his photography. We stayed on the phone together until 6am and I let him hear the bird chirping outside my window before I fell asleep. That was one of the most glorious nights of my life. Thinking about it now, my face burns. It was so long ago, but I still think about the gifts he gave me, the birth of the hopeless romantic. The girl who believes in love beyond reason was born from his words. I mailed him pictures I drew; he mailed me photographs he took. We talked about where we would live when we got married. We named our children. I had one picture of his face. It is the only picture of his face I’ve ever seen. Probably the only one I'll ever see.

Then the distance, the stress, the cost of the phone calls, the expectations, the hope... It got to be too much. We imploded. I wanted to throw caution to the wind and make anything and everything happen. He had a much clearer grip on the fact that we were just dumb kids with zero cash. It ended and I was devastated. Correction: I was Devastated with a capital D. He would still write me once in a while, but his messages got shorter and less sparse. I was so confused and hurt. We eventually stopped speaking. I would try for years to email him, although I haven’t in a very long time. 10 years or more, maybe. It amazes me that in this time of information overload where you can find so much information about anyone, anywhere, anytime; this guy is practically non-existent. I only wonder if he still thinks about me the way I still think about him. Even if he is married with 2 kids (which he probably is). Even though logic and real life says in every way he shouldn't... I still hope he does. Just every once in a while I hope he thinks about us and he smiles.

There is more to say. Maybe one day; not now. I just wonder is all. This song brings it all back. Like a fucking hurricane.

I honestly haven’t listened to it all the way through in years; can’t even do it now.