peevish mama

Saint James sits at the laptop in the kitchen, scrolls through hundreds upon hundreds of songs, clicking – listening – clicking – listening. Perched like a gargoyle, he listens with his whole body. He listens with his ears, his eyes – his shoulders tensed up, his toes tightly curled around the rungs of the stool. When he finds a song he likes, he leaves it on and flips over to the internet to google cool soccer moves.

He’s been lingering in the Red Hot Chili Peppers, memorizing song titles and lyrics with that steel trap brain of his. The brain that memorizes multiplication tables I’ve long forgotten, legions of Pokemon and all their powers and evolutions, piano scales, the birthdays of his friends and teachers, the habitats and life cycles of obscure Australian rodents, the relationships and power struggles of countless clans of Warrior Cats, and myriad other boy esoterica. I am humbled by the power and elasticity of the young brain – and now, it seems, he is turning his attention to music, at the ripe old age of eight. What a lucky little dude.

Saint James: This is a really good section. It’s Dani California, then Snow, then Charlie. 

(Hmmm . . . so the lad likes Stadium Arcadium . . . good man.)

Me: Are those your favorites?

Saint James: I don’t know yet. (Scroll, click, scroll, click . . . measured, like his father . . . withholding judgment until he’s sure).

It’s equal parts heart-warming and heart-wrenching to watch this little development: the subtle spike in interest in music. He’s inching ever so slowly toward adolescence, when music and friendships will be everything. (Gus Van Sant said: “I think that when you are sixteen and seventeen years old, you’re making the most important connections with the world that you will probably ever make in your life. If you ask a seventy year old what his favorite song is, it’ll be a song he heard when he was sixteen.”) Saint James is shifting from responding to music like a child, by jumping around like a clumsy happy marionette, to being way more still and aware, to listening with care and curiosity, and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of angst.

To me there is a correlation between starting to love music and starting to love. I’m not talking about the amorphous selfish fuzzy blanket love of a child. I’m talking about love love. Real love. Big love. Love that can take you over the moon. Love that can leave you dead in a ditch.

Saint James is still young – I don’t think girls are really on his radar screen yet. As far as I can tell, there are no snot addled crying into the pillow histrionics on the near horizon (or maybe that’s just a girl thing). But something IS happening. Movement, stirring – in that deep seated spot where soulfulness resides – in that space that exists between the guts and the heart that aches and throbs and churns when lyrics and melodies and bass lines just happen to coalesce in a certain way. Saint James might not yet understand that music can be a ticket to fantasy, to possibility, to shelter, succor and relief from heartache and loss. That it can be a way to celebrate, a way to mourn, a way to feel turned on, a way to feel understood, a way to pass the time because time moves so very slowly when we’re young. I think he’s just located that thick artery that runs between a good song and the soul. He’s gently probing it with his finger, starting to feel that pulse. He might not know it yet, but I’m watching it happen. Right here in my kitchen.

There’s a girl just down the aisle,

Oh, to turn and see her smile.

You can hear the words she wrote

As you read the hidden note . . .*

Oh, son, go, explore . . . just take care with that sweet heart of yours.

*From Sugar Mountain by the great Neil Young.

It was 1980. My family had moved so I was starting at a new school part way through fourth grade – George P. Way Elementary. My teacher was named Mrs. Hood and she had crazy green eyes – possibly early incarnation, rudimentary, not very subtle color contacts. Every day I rode the bus with a mixture of trepidation and wonder. I sat alone those first days, hoping not to be noticed, warily observing these strange new kids, trying to intuit where I would fit into the pecking order, hoping it would be anywhere but the bottom. It was winter, and I began to identify different kids by their brightly colored ski jackets and hats, by their chapped lips or perpetually runny noses.

I remember two things from those bus rides:

I remember the exact moment I fell in love with Jeff Borglin.

I remember the exact moment I fell in love with music.

Jeff Borglin was a tall fifth grader who ignored me at the bus stop. He kicked the snow. He threw snowballs at tree trunks. He stomped on ice to make it crack. But he didn’t talk to me. Not that I tried to talk to him either. We waited for the bus in silence, tiny puffs of white air holding no words hovering in front of our mouths.

One day he sat up on his knees with his back to the steamy bus window and pull off his ski hat. I gasped. I was smitten. That’s all she wrote.

He was blond. His face was dark – I had just assumed his hair was dark. But he was blond . . . I silently pledged my nine year old heart to him and spent the next few years pining for him, spying on him, concocting cockamamie schemes to put myself in his path. I took bogus surveys with my best friend Susie, furrowed brows and official looking note books in hand (favorite food: hotdogs, favorite sport: soccer, favorite subject: math). I rode by his house relentlessly on my aqua Schwinn ten speed, cooly sitting back using my arms for carefully choreographed moves to Electric Avenue instead of holding the handlebars . . . until my dog, Ginger, ran in front of my bike and I wiped out right in front of him. We’re gonna rock down to Elec-tric Aven-ue. And then we’ll take it higher. BAM! Stupid golden retriever. Stupid Eddie Grant. One time I even played the damsel in distress card. There was a frog in our pool (horrors!) and I quickly dispensed my little brother to go get Jeff Borglin to help us. When Jeff silently lifted the frog out with the skimmer in two seconds and threw it over the fence, I felt pretty lame . . . and I’ve never played the damsel in distress since.

You live, you learn.

The other love I found on that bus came wrapped up in these words:

We don’t need no educa-tion . . . we don’t need no thought control . . .

Someone in the back of the bus had a little radio and I remember peering over the seat and wishing so badly I knew what it was. It is absolutely my first memory of any kind of rock music and I was completely enraptured by the tinny, scratchy sound I was hearing.

No dark sarcasm in the classroom . . . Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!

My parents only listened to classical music, and in those days of cumbersome turn tables and gigantic speakers, even that was a rarity. I felt my stomach churn with longing as I watched, greedily hoping against all hope that one of the kids might blurt out “Hey, I love this BLANK!” Even then, what would I have done? I had no idea how to find music . . . how to get music. And I certainly wouldn’t have been allowed to touch the stereo. I was the oldest child and I had inherited nothing by way of musical heirlooms from my parents. I was a tabula rasa. If I wanted music, I was going to have to find it for myself.

All in all you’re just a – nother brick in the wall!

I loved how they said “wall” and I innocently mimicked the Cockney accent when I scrunched my face and sang those couple lines to myself in the mirror, over and over. Wohl. What was I hearing? What WAS it? Powerful beautiful angry confusing. I needed to know. I don’t think I even knew to ask “who” . . . I don’t think I even knew there was such a thing as bands . . . singers . . . rock stars . . .

When I was twelve I bought myself a little tape player/radio with forty dollars of my babysitting money. I spent all my time listening to the top 40 station and trying to tape songs off the radio. I would get so angry when the dj talked into the beginning of the song, ruining my Abracadabra, my Jack and Diane, my Eye of the Tiger, my Hard to Say I’m Sorry, my Tainted Love, my 8675three-oh-niyiine.

That little piece-of-shit radio cracked open the world for me and out spilled the blood, guts and glory of eighties rock. Just take a look at this and see if it isn’t just a bubbling stew of mushy pre-pubescent melodramatic yearnings. Or maybe the stew was me, and I was just projecting it onto the music. No. It wasn’t just me – this bunch is drenched in harmonizing male falsettos and swelling synthesized guitars -perfect fodder for a bookish twelve year old girl holding nothing but a little black box of unrequited love: her little black radio.

Doctor Dash knows to forgive me for the occasional lapse in . . . shall I say . . . taste? Most people our age were bequeathed rich tracks of musical territory from their older siblings or their parents. If your baseline is The Dead, The Stones, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, The Who . . . If those are the bands you took for granted, that constitute your early consciousness of music – pre-reason, pre-choosing, then what a gift you received! What a golden starting point for your musical journey!

My baseline was 80’s rock, if you can even call it rock: Rick Springfield, Survivor, Toto, Men at Work, Yes, Aha, Olivia Newton John, Journey, The GoGos, Duran Duran, Boy George, Eddie Money . . . Eddie Grant! I started there and by early high school had immersed myself in the Cure, New Order, The Smiths, Depeche Mode, Yaz, Alphaville, Brian Ferry, Thomas Dolby . . . synthesizers and effeminate men . . . then I worked my way back to the greats, and then forward and then back and around and around to where I am today . . . still peering over the plastic bus seat, wide-eyed, confused, and falling in love.

As of late, I’ve noticed that the insides of my two front teeth are feeling a little, well, chipped . . . micro-chipped, like tiny slivers of enamel have simply fallen off, leaving them feeling a little rough and impossible to ignore with my tongue.  Of course, because I worry, I worried.  Is it my electric toothbrush, supposedly so forgiving for my gum tissue but perhaps too punishing for my enamel?  Is it my toothpaste? My gum?  Yes, probably my gum!  Trident whitening.  Truth is, my teeth are white enough – I just like Trident and the push-through foil packets. Maybe I need a substitute?  Yes, new gum, definitely.  And then the other day as I’m driving along in my minivan, I reach for my pint glass of ice water and it suddenly hits me.  Ever since I forsook plastic, I’ve been bringing glass glasses of water in the car and every time I go over a bump . . . shit, does it take a genius? 

And another realization from this very evening: I have always always always coveted a huge, throaty, slippery, rich, honeyed singing voice.  A voice with soul and ache that sounds like it has murmured through thousands of cigarettes.  Always.  If I had my pick of Superhero talents, that would be it.**  So tonight I was out with my betties, Nanook of the North, Crackerjack and Birdie for a much needed airing, having a full-on rumpshaker of a good time watching our fave band New Congress.  (En passant, Bunkers, aside from its unfortunately cheesy name, is a fabulous bar on Thursday nights.  It’s big and dark and New Congress draws a really quirky and diverse crowd.  For some reason I can’t put my finger on, silliness and good times always find us when we go to Bunkers.)  So we’re dancing and drinking and watching the female back-up singer and a new girl who popped in for some really sexy, heavy rapping, and we’re remarking how both of these girls, being on the let’s say, curvaceous side, would really benefit from losing the jeans and tight t-shirts and slipping into sexy little wrap dresses – showing a little cleavage, showing a little leg – and then you’re rapping like a bad-ass mother fucker . . . ah, what’s not to love about that?!?!  But they’re in their twenties and Lord knows, it takes some years to figure it all out.  And then I’m telling Nanook, that I’d love to be able to sing and she’s telling me she’d love to be able to rap, and I’m watching these young buxom beauties belt it out and I’m struck by lightning.  The bosoms are actually responsible for the voice!!!  Am I the first person who has thought of this?  It totally makes sense – there’s more flesh, girth, cushion from which to reverberate.  Kind of why a base drum has so much more timbre and soul than a snare drum.  Think about it, can you think of a singer with a really good voice who’s skinny and flat as a board?  Well, PJ Harvey comes to mind . . . Joan Jett . . . but those aren’t the kind of voices I’m talking about.  I’m talking about HUGE voices.  Maybe I don’t want a voice so much as I want breasts.   

*Caveat Lector:  this entry is the product of post-New Congress two o’clock in the morning drunken musings. Only grammatical changes were subsequently made in the cool (painfully bright) light of day.

**Actually, geographical travel in the blink of an eye with the ability to take twenty people would be my ultimate first choice power – super deluxe hotel in Rio de Janiero for Carnivale, anyone?  Sunburnt country villa in the outskirts of Sevilla, Spain (con picina y cocinera), anyone?  Sunset-to-dawn rave in a Moroccan desert anyone?  Tree house eco-resort in the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica, anyone?  Rowdy Karaoke bar in Tokyo with the Japanese national baseball team anyone?  Deluxe white water rafting trip on the Snake River in Idaho, anyone?  Beautiful chalet in the Swiss Alps for New Years, anyone?  Horseback riding trek through Patagonia followed by a decadent weekend in Buenos Aires, anyone?  You see, this power would not be wasted on me.  Week-long Indian wedding of two huge Bollywood stars, anyone?  Don’t even tempt me to go on . . .

Today was parent pick-up day at school, meaning there were no buses, meaning the parents were supposed to pick up the children.  I had it written in my calendar, I swear.  But in an effort to clean, I had momentarily moved it.  Apparently, if my calendar isn’t yawning open, shaking its calendar tits in my face  I’m a goner.  I’m like a baby who hasn’t figured out object permanence.  Where’s the ball?  It’s gone!  Forever!  Oh, there it is.  Now it’s gone!  Calendar shut means no appointments, nothing going on, nothing to remember.  Total Freebird. 

And I don’t even have the decency to have a good excuse.  What was I doing when I got the humiliating call from Lenore, the school secretary, who had a forgotten and baleful Supergirl sitting in her office?  I can tell you I wasn’t racing against the clock to file a brief, I wasn’t listening for a heart murmur on my cardiac patient, I wasn’t squinting down the eyepiece of an electron microscope, I wasn’t ladling soup at a shelter. I wasn’t kneading bread, or making a soufflé or cleaning my house.  No, I was downloading My Kinda Lover by Billy Squier off iTunes.

We had tickets to Beck last night.  Not that I had any business going to a concert after the weekend I had.  But it was BECK!  Beck.  Beck.  Beck, I chanted softly to myself as I lay in bed at three o’clock in the afternoon, feeling as if someone had pulled my lungs out through my ears, dipped them in egg, dredged them in panko bread crumbs, deep fried them and stuffed them back in through my nostrils.  I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t move.  If it had been anyone else, I would have called in sick . . . (actually, I would miraculously emerge from my cremation urn for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but that’s another level of physical addiction/obsession altogether).  Beck. Beck. Beck.  I needed to rally.  Big time. 

So at fiveish, I made myself a nice cup of tea.  Then I had a little appetizer of Advil (for the aches) and Tylenol (for the shakes/suspicion of low-grade fever) washed down with copious amounts of limeade.  Then I took a few puffs of my inhaler (for the aforementioned crispy lungs).  Then I sat down to a lovely dinner of take-out from Convention Grill with my dear family (California burger with swiss and bacon, incase you were wondering . . . and a chocolate shake . . . and fries, of course).  Then I put on my purple jeans and my silver boots.  And suddenly I felt better.  I felt better than better!  I felt ready to bust a move and rock out to one of the little geniuses (the other being Prince) I’ve been wanting to see live for so so so long!

Doctor Dash and I went to the show with Pipes and our other friend who I will call Big (think Tom Hanks -he’s really just a kid in a grown-up body, although he has managed to become an orthopedic surgeon and snag a foxy wife, so I’d say that he’s a bit of a precocious child).  

Beck rocked.  It was a highly entertaining show on all fronts: sweaty, thrashing, screamin’ guitary, woozy crackly feed-backy, quirky without being annoying, and fully soul-satisfying.  An ocean of music – deep and vast and unpredictable.  I couldn’t take my eyes off him.  He’s such a smart little freak.  He played every song you wanted to hear off every album, driving home just what a prolific artist he is,  just how multifarious his sources and influences, just how far out his tentacles reach.  Exactly what you’d expect from the little man genius, who, incidentally is wearing his hair down to his shoulders . . . with BANGS!  He looks ridiculous.  He looks awesome.  And the little chickie on guitar could not have been more adorable. What a rockin’ little cutie-pie minx.  I wanted to be her.  Dash, Pipes and Big just wanted her.  Actually, I did too a little – ya, she’s that cute.  What a gig . . . sigh . . . I wonder if she smooches Beck and his Robin Hood hair.

We wormed our way to the belly of the beast (where I was nearly Marsha Brady’d by a young fool with flailing elbows) and danced with the youngsters. Well, I danced . . . and Pipes danced . . . Dash just kind of grooved.  And poor Big got poked relentlessly by some suburban office worker’s enormous cheap black purse.  You know what?  Time for a public service announcement:  Ladies, when you go to a show, do like me and simply slip some cash and your license in your back pocket, or do like my betties and take a little clutch with your lippy and the rest. But don’t bring your gigantic structured purse with God knows what in it and expect the people around you to like you.  For the love of God, leave the damn bag at home you loser mid-level human resources employee!  That prissy matron is probably the person who lost a heel on the way out.  Pipes and I just cackled at the forlorn, destroyed heel strewn on the ground.  Serves her right for wearing cheap stilettos to a concert.  You gotta be quick, nimble and UNFETTERED!  It could be a matter of survival if the shit really hit the fan and there was a stampede or something.  Man, have I digressed.  Back to the kick-ass concert.

I just wanted to shrink Beck and take him home with me in one of those mesh ball tea infusers tied around my neck.  I would put him in the little wooden dollhouse that nobody plays with and I would sooooo pimp it out for him!  I would cut up my faux fur to make him a super deluxe bedspread and some throws and I would put really cool wallpaper up and I would go to those stores where all those freaky crafts people go and buy really nice miniature furniture.  And I would cook him delicious feasts – none of this corn niblet in a thimble crap.  I would grill him perfectly seared tiny steaks. I would toss him lovely and fresh little salads in lemony vinaigrettes, whip him some perfectly creamy and garlicky mashed potatoes.  The way I figure it, I would need tweezers, a scalpel, a medicine dropper, and a tiny whisk to cook for him – and maybe an Easy-Bake Oven so I could make him tiny pies and fruit crumbles. And we would have so much to talk about and I would be such a good hostess that I would begin to neglect my other duties, and my husband and children would start to resent little Beck, and I would begin to fear for his safety, and it would be time for him to leave anyway because he puts out an album every year or so, and so we would share a teary good bye, promise to stay in touch . . . and his next album would be all about me.

Anyway, he rocked.  

[Note: the photo is from some dude’s Flickr stream.  Not sure what the legal ramifications are of filching some dude’s photo off his Flickr stream, but in my defense, I did harass Dash repeatedly to try to get a picture on his camera phone and it just didn’t work out.]