Elton John & Kiki Dee - Don't Go Breaking My Heart

“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” - John Lennon



An over-active imagination for a child can be either a blessing or a curse. If a child was to never learn to control this imagination, to distinguish reality from the fantasy land in their heads - this would be a curse; this would be me. When the fantasy that a person makes up in their own mind becomes literally painful to let go of, this is bad. most kids learn how to let this go. I held on voraciously. It is one of the things I like most and least about myself. when I think of where it all started, this black and white perception of reality that I seem to have, my all or nothing personality, I have no one but Elton John to blame.

To explain:

Growing up in the little ranch house near Lake Wheeler, It was me and my brother surrounded by kids I had trouble connecting with because I couldn’t play regular kid games. I wanted to play “house” or “stories”, wherein I would create some elaborate set-up, epic love story or something involving shipwrecks or space shuttle launches. When my friends would get tired of me being so bossy and trying to direct the action of the story, they all wandered off to climb trees or ride bikes and I retreated back inside to my real friends; my 7” vinyl collection and fisher price portable turntable.

I don’t remember who bought all these vinyls for me, if I adopted them or they were picked up at flea markets, they were just there. I do remember buying a few with my allowance, but the rest of these singles, of which there were and still are stacks of them, I hoarded and multiplied. Titles I would have never thought to have picked out for myself but played over and over again because I could control them. Eddie Rabbit’s “I Love a Rainy Night” and The Beatles “Revolution” are a couple of the ones I remember playing the most.

I remember sitting on the floor of my living room with my headphones on, listening intently with my hand on the dial of the receiver of that huge Kenwood stereo my dad had back then. I couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6, so this is 1982-ish. I can very clearly remember formulating this theory that seemed completely rational to me at the time, which was that for every song on the radio, the Band or Musician had to be in the studio set up and ready to play each song. For the same song to play on two different stations meant the band had to move very fast and hopefully the radio stations weren’t very far away from each other. This is why musicians were paid so much for what they did and had such big fancy houses like Graceland; so much work! This is when a child’s overactive imagination is a blessing because it’s adorable to look back and laugh at myself for this.

Around this same time, I very vividly remember dragging the portable turntable into my brother’s room and playing Elton John and Kiki Dee’s “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart” on 7” vinyl over and over; dancing/spinning in circles. (I had a constant habit of spinning in circles to music as a kid. This lasted way into my early teens. I apparently was a whirling dervish in my past life.) I very suddenly had a very vivid realization of the true meaning of the song… The man was singing, quite literally about his heart breaking. This singer was having a heart attack. This somehow translated into some sort of Frankenstein situation whereupon the Man singings’ heart has been broken and the woman sings “I’ll give you my heart” and therefore some sort of post-modern promethean heart transplant takes place. I then spent the remainder of the afternoon staging and perfecting the stage production or perhaps music video of this song, acting out both parts on my own. I can’t tell you how many times I picked up and dropped that needle that day. I played both the donor and the donee, there was dancing, props, the works. I can still quite literally remember dance moves to certain parts of this song. This was the first time I ever did this to a song. Now this all I do to songs. Damn your lyrical prowess, Bernie Taupin!

Here is the curse of the overactive imagination. One would assume as a child, such daydreams with any activity, musical or otherwise, are normal or encouraged. However, it became a type of compulsion and expectation for me that remains to this day. My favorite songs all have choreography or a story/music video in my head. The best songs are the ones that have me starring as the lead singer, perhaps on stage. This entitlement I seem to have to these songs, the trigger in my head that won’t allow me to listen to a really good song without spacing out and creating the story in my head that best fits it, causes me to sometimes become what others would perceive as abnormally attached to certain songs. Or even certain bands. There are songs that border on absolute obsession for me because the story is so emotionally and personally strong in my mind that I have laid claim to them.

My overactive imagination married me to this ideal of only songs that are worthy of a story are worthy of a place in my heart. There are many, many songs with many, many stories. Some of them are true, some of them are what I wish were true. I created this blog to keep up with the true ones. The rest are stored in reserve on my external hard drive and in my noodle.

This is the song that started it all. Thank Elton.