Wow.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost 4 years since I last wrote something that appeared in this space. So much has changed over the course of that time… Instagram was invented. Spotify became a major source of music consumption.
And Miley Cyrus’ tongue has likely gotten really, really dry.
I’m not even sure what possessed me to start writing this. Maybe it was boredom. Maybe it was singing karaoke with Rob Sheffield the other week (true story), reading his book Turn Around Bright Eyes, and remembering that (albeit on a much smaller and less successful scale), I Used To Do That, Too.
Maybe it was to see if I still could.
Being one of the first columnists on Forces of Geek makes me secretly feel a bit like the Martha Quinn of the site. I wrote for about a year, and then I went away. Where did I go?, you may ask. Well, I’d like to say that I was doing something fabulous, that I was undercover in a foreign country, wearing a catsuit, driving a metallic blue vintage Lotus Elan, and, along with an umbrella-wielding hottie, I was saving the world from diabolical megalomaniacs, one judo chop at a time… but, as we all know from today’s papers, the diabolical megalomaniacs are alive and well and currently holding our government hostage.
Maybe I should have made better use of my time.
Anyway, the reality was obviously a lot less exciting. With substantially less cool clothes. As the Soft Cell song goes, “I tried to make it work, you in a cocktail skirt, and me in a suit… well, it just wasn’t me. “
Back in the day, I wrote a column entitled “Music Is My Grey Fedora” about my early teenage obsession with the television program Remington Steele.
During the show’s run, Stephanie Zimbalist (who played private eye Laura Holt and who was my total childhood hero) co-hosted a Candid Camera television special with Alan Funt.
One of the skits involved her playing a secretary who was literally chained to her desk by her boss, and when the repairman came to fix the phone or the copier or whatever, she acted like absolutely nothing was wrong.
That was pretty much my life for several years.
But I didn’t find it nearly as funny as the Candid Camera skit.
While I wasn’t a secretary, and I wasn’t actually chained to my desk, I spent a whole lot of time there. Full weekends. Weekday nights. Weekday mornings… sometimes until 5:30am.
And I promise you… there is absolutely nothing in this world that needs to be done at a desk for anyone at 5:30am.
Another time, I had to work until 1am on my 40th birthday. Which was a Saturday.
One of the (many) effects of living like that was that, while music had always been the one thing above all else that I totally lived for, it suddenly had to be pushed down, bottled, and forgotten.
Hey! I had to hide my love away.
Which meant…
After a lifetime of wanting to, I was finally learning to play the guitar, but I had to drop out of my weekly lessons, because I couldn’t get there.
I stopped writing this column, because, when I got home at 11:30pm, I was too mentally exhausted to think in pop culture witticisms.
I stopped going to shows, because purchasing tickets was too much of a stressful commitment.
I stopped talking about music, because no one knew what I was talking about. Or particularly cared.
I stopped listening to music as much as I used to, because I just didn’t have the time.
And, well, eventually… just because.
In the midst of it all, every once in a while, there would be these joyful flashes of normalcy in which I caught glimpses of my previous life. Like the time I was on the phone, and the hold music was a Muzak version of Marshall Crenshaw’s “Someday, Someway.” Or the time when I was walking down the hall with a co-worker and I quipped “all I wanted was a Pepsi” in response to her comment, and the consultant following us down the hall (who I had never seen before and would never see again) snickered because he actually got my joke.
Yeah. Those two examples. That was pretty much it. I remember them to this day, because they were so out of the ordinary. But, in the moment, it was almost better not to have them. They reminded me of my old life and made me momentarily really happy, but, when I tried to share my happiness, my enthusiasm was met with a blank stare.
It was so very Lonely In [My] Nightmare.
And, in the words of Chris Bell, “I Got Kinda Lost”.
Over the course of my decades-long music fandom, I had amassed a sizable and solid body of knowledge: genres, bands, geographic origins, musicians’ names, lyrics, record labels, months of release, other various bits of trivia, and, in some instances, the ability to identify a song in literally one note.
But, after a year or so of repressing my love of music, all of that started to slip away. In ways and at a rapidity I never imagined were even possible. Walking through a subway station one evening, I actually couldn’t remember the last name of the lead singer of Joy Division.
Um, that would be “Curtis.”
Ian Curtis.
But the most terrifying thing was that only a small part of me was freaked out by that. The other, larger part of me was just completely resigned to it.
It was like I was living in half the songs on Blur’s album The Great Escape.
Heaven Knows I Was Miserable.
[Puts cassette tape in boom box. Fast forwards tape. Hits “stop.” And the intro beats of George Michael’s “Freedom ’90” begin to play.]
But there was something deep inside of me
There was someone else I forgot to be.
I left that job a while back.
To go back to working with music.
Goodbye To You.
At the time, Stefan asked me to start writing again for Forces of Geek, but I declined, because I no longer felt that I could access the witty, pop culturally mental agile voice contained in my earlier columns. I also no longer felt that I had anything to say.
While I’m still not sure I have anything to say, the voice (and the music knowledge) are returning slowly… slowly… ever-so-painfully slowly… so to the extent that I’m ever inspired to write, I’m willing to give it a go.
Maybe it’s like amnesia, and remembering will help my recovery.
Column Soundtrack:
Laurie Johnson: Chase That Car (from “The Avengers”)
Soft Cell: Say Hello, Wave Goodbye
The Beatles: You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away
Marshall Crenshaw: Someday, Someway
Suicidal Tendencies: Institutionalized
Duran Duran: Lonely In Your Nightmare
Chris Bell: I Got Kinda Lost
Joy Division: She’s Lost Control
Blur: Ernold Same
Blur: Best Days
The Smiths: Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now
George Michael: Freedom ‘90
Scandal: Goodbye to You
