Longing, Belonging

You always hurt the one you love

I am memorizing the state capitals, sitting on the bed in my room. Montgomery, Alabama. The punny one -- Juneau, Alaska. It’s cold, and the house has no heat. Phoenix, Arizona – near where my dad moved after the divorce.

I was an outstanding middle school student. I completed all my homework diligently, in part because there was not much else to do. We hadn't lived in this town long enough to make friends. Though perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered how long we stayed – I was far better at schoolwork than making friends.

Sacramento, California. Hartford, Connecticut.

I had three main sources of entertainment: Books (thank goodness there was a library within walking distance). My dollhouse, which I kept in a hidden nook in my room. And the family record player.

Our supply of records was limited, but I had my favorites. Sometimes I was allowed to take the player into my room. Most often I would put on the album Best of Spike Jones -- and enter the funhouse. Silly voices! Spoofy lyrics! Raucous sound effects! It was like stepping out of a monochrome existence into a garishly colored cartoon.

Frankfort, Kentucky – that makes me hungry for hotdogs. Baton Rouge, Louisiana – we lived there, briefly. Boston, Massachusetts. We visited relatives there. Albany, New York. We had lived there briefly too.

I particularly enjoyed the songs that started out as serious, mellifluous renditions of then-popular songs, before unleashing the irreverent zaniness. Like a sleek limo hijacked by clowns.

You always hurt

The one you love

The one you shouldn't hurt at all

Spike Jones' album was my keyhole to another dimension, one where things were not supposed to make sense.

Providence, Rhode Island. Montpelier, Vermont. Madison, Wisconsin – that one's easy to remember, being my birthplace.

You always break [KERUNCH!]

The kindest heart [THUMP-THUMP, THUMP-THUMP]

With a hasty word you can’t recall [WHERE ARE YOU, YOU OLD BAT?!

When we moved, my dollhouse was accidentally left behind.

What do the simple folk do?

I'm lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling. Darkness cloaks the mess on the floor and the paint chip on the wall, marking where I had hurled my journal earlier in one of my existential crises.

I cannot stand one more moment alone with my thoughts, poking and punching me in the brain. I roll over and hit the play button on the tape player beside my bed.

Freshman year I somehow acquired a dual radio/cassette player and small stack of cassettes, mostly second-hand copies of Broadway musical albums. I reached the point where I was unable to fall asleep without sound. But odd bird that I was, I never liked the pop music that drifted from my peers' car windows. Sometimes I caught Dr. Demento or a radio drama program I liked -- but after getting particularly creeped out one night by a sci fi program, I turned to musicals.

Oklahoma. Camelot. Porgy and Bess. My Fair Lady. Man of La Mancha. I would listen meticulously, hitting rewind repeatedly until I had the soundtrack memorized -- down to every vocal inflection and instrumental trill. And then I could sing along in my mind until I fell asleep, cradled by the familiar words.

In addition to its soporific power, the advantage of carrying these soundtracks around in my head was that I could produce a lyric for every occasion. I turned to these characters, in lieu of friends, for a new vocabulary for expressing emotion.

Feeling sorry for myself? I could echo Gweniviere's plaintive complaint in Camelot:

Oh, Genevieve, Saint Genevieve,

Where were you when my youth was sold?

... Shan't I be young before I'm old?

Or feeling proud and confident? I could swagger along with Lancelot:

That mortal who

These marvels can do

C'est moi, c'est moi 'tis I!

When I felt ignored and neglected, Sancho Panza (Man of La Mancha) empathized.

If no one listens, then it's just as well

At least I won't get caught in any lies I tell

When my heart harbored an unrequited yearning, I could sigh with Laurey (Oklahoma):

Out of my dreams and into your arms

I long to fly ...

Sometimes I wouldn't even realize what I was feeling until my subconscious coughed up the appropriate snippet. That continues to this day. I will find myself humming, "Just you wait, Henry Higgins, just you wait ..." and think to myself: Oh, right -- I'm angry.

The emotional undercurrent of these high school years could be summed up as melancholy ennui. “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher in Ecclesiastes 1:2:. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”

What do the simple folk do

To help them escape when they're blue?

My life was far, far away from that royal couple in their luxurious palace in perfect Camelot, yet they -- like me -- felt blue.

Once, upon the road, I came upon a lad

Singing in a voice three times his size

When I asked him why, he told me he was sad

And singing always made his spirits rise

And that's what simple folk do

I surmise

Even King Arthur, like me, could only guess what cured the blues and lifted the lonely spirit. Sing along to soundtracks? Smile to Spike Jones?

I still surmise.