The brain can be a powerful thing. As a mom, i forget this from time to time because i can no longer rely on it. Funnily enough, i found this began to happen shortly after my son was born… like in the hospital.
Cut to 2 kids and 8 yrs later I am sitting in my room listening to a newly downloaded album. Oingo Boingo.
There were quite a few albums they did, but i purchased Skeletons in the Closet.
At one point i had a few cds but over time i’ve lost them. As I grew up, I thought I outgrew this music. There has been a mental break in re-buying any because this music is the entire soundtrack to my adolescence. My best friend from my entire childhood died a year and a half ago and i couldnt bring myself to revisit this music until today. After agonizing over which one to buy, I found myself looking forward to revisiting the music.. until i began playing it.
The first song was fine, but when i began humming the intro to the next song before it began, i was hit with a wave of sadness. This music was such a part of every day that i can turn it on after TWENTY YEARS and still know all the lyrics and the order of the songs on the ‘album’. (If i was being truthful to the experience, i would play the tapes instead of a digital song on my iphone.)
I was struck by how amazing the brain can actually be. The recall is jarring. Im listening to this and in my head the background noise of Crystal shifting her karmann ghia and the windows down and the smell of the beach has me very sad for both a childhood and person i am never again to experience.
I need to be able to appreciate and enjoy music like this without immediately becoming sad.
What I CAN appreciate is listening to a song I can select from a program, push a button, and immediately have access to it. Versus the original screenplay:
Load a blank tape into your boom box and wait, sweating with anxiety, for the radio station to play it. You just hope to hit the TWO buttons that allow the recording in time to miss the commercial and still get the entire song. God forbid your mom calls you out of your room, or the phone rings.
This was option #2 second only to recording your friend playing the either radio-recorded, or purchased original on her tape player, and recording from one box to the other.
Then, when playing it back the 12th time, you hear that tell tale squeal of the tape being eaten by your cheap ass pink boom box, and you leap into action. Careful not to tear the impossibly thin cellophane tape, winding it back up trying to avoid any flips in the tape.
If only all my high school classes were recorded and played repeatedly in a car at every event and outing i might be able to now help my 3rd grader with his homework.
Fun facts: Danny Elfman is the lead singer of Oingo Boingo. He has composed movie and TV music ranging from The Simpsons, Desperate Housewives, most Tim Burton Films, and my personal fav- he is the singing voice of Jack Skelington 🙂
Sarcasmica 