CSotD: Want to come to my apartment and see my playlist?
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I like Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal a lot, but this one touched off mostly memories of how much this wasn't my experience.
That wouldn't have seemed as striking except that, for some reason I can't identify, I've gone through a sequence of dreams in the last week or so that involved old girlfriends. Nothing erotic, mind you, and, in fact, mostly in the context of not being together anymore but needing to work together on one thing or another.
Dreams get pretty tame as you round the clubhouse turn, I guess.
Anyway, I do get nostalgic for that time when you just threw the dice, jumped in with both feet, truly and enthusiastically believing in the sort of fantastic earth-rocking love everlasting which was young love.
My second time around, I was in my mid-thirties and love was lovelier, I have to say. More stable, more sane, warmer, more meaningful.
In terms of avoiding disappointment and wasted time, it was a good thing that thirtysomething-me was so much more tuned in and could use a little Spidey Sense to narrow things down and avoid the obvious non-contenders. (My sons are laughing as they read this. Guys, I'm not saying it was a perfect system.)
But, you know, there's a helluva difference between establishing a rewarding partnership and just being screwball crazy in love. It's like "The Graduate" where Elaine tells Ben that her new fiance said they'd make a good team, contrasted with him racing down to the chapel and pounding on the glass.
When it somes to romance, sanity is overvalued if not irrelevant, and it sure was fun to be desperately in love for about 48 hours at a clip.
Music was never the great divider at that stage, however, particularly since we met so often at musical places — parties, or the coffeehouse, or on first dates to concerts. The music was playing before we met.
So I've been thinking of music that either I didn't know or wasn't particularly into, which women I went out with introduced me to. It's not a surprising list, but it's a pretty good one, topped by Cat Stevens, James Taylor and Laura Nyro, all of them much favored by women but not exclusively so, and then some like John Stewart, Jerry Jeff Walker and John Hartford who didn't necessarily rock my world but were a welcome addition to the playlist.
Then I thought, well, the guy who does this strip is a lot younger than I am, and probably thinks of "young love" as high school or junior high. Fair enough.
Most of the girls I fell for at that stage of life are associated with specific songs rather than groups, and I think you'll see a theme emerge if you know these songs: "Blue Velvet," "Surfer Girl," "Today (While The Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine)."
Yes, they are all slow songs. We had a lot of dances in those days, and you're not gonna fall in love over Rufus Thomas asking if your monkey can do the dog.
A few were more specific: I had a summer romance with a dancer at the time "Pretty Ballerina" came out, and that one still gives me a little case of the misty what-ifs. (But I'm afraid that mountain did, indeed, move without me.)
And I associate "Baby, The Rain Must Fall" with a high school girlfriend, not because of the song itself but because we watched that movie on TV once. Well, no, we didn't.
But the music and the relationships sorted themselves out pretty neatly, even at that age. About a decade ago, I was on the road doing student writing workshops in partnership with an established author and journalist who was very close to my age. No romance involved, but we found we had a lot to talk about. She was insightful and intelligent and funny, and I asked her, as we walked to the car after dinner,
"Beach Boys or British Invasion?"
"British Invasion." No pause to think, and also no exclamation point, no further conversation on the topic. An obvious answer to a silly question.
It would have been an even sillier question back in high school.
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