Same Singer, Different Songs

Dearest Rachel –

At the moment, I’m short on both inspiration and time, when it comes to talking to you this morning. The former is probably due to the uniformity of midweek; when days look the same every time you open your eyes to the not-yet-dawn, what’s to tell you about? The latter has to do with the limited office time I’ll be dealing with, as I’m meeting Lars today. It seems that we keep extending the path that we tread through the woods; once, we would turn around upon reaching New Trier High School, but now we proceed under the Edens Expressway and even Wilmette Road as a matter of course. What was once an endurance test to cover less than six miles has become fairly easy, to the point where an eight-mile round trip is only so because of the time it chews up.

So I apologize if it seems like I’m giving you short shrift today; for what it’s worth, thanks to our own sleep schedules back in the day, it’s not as if you and I would talk much in the morning, like I do with you now. If you were awake before I kissed you goodbye of a weekday, either I had made the mistake of being too loud with my morning preparations or you had somewhere you had to go early (for you) in the morning, neither of which was a remotely common occurrence.

And, to be sure, I’m sending you a lot more words than I am either “Dara” or “Lee.” “Lee”s schedule seems to be as hectic as mine used to be (although she seems to like it more than I did; good for her), so a quick ‘hello’ in the morning is all we really get in thus far, although I try to keep up with that. As for “Dara,” after she talked about buying Philippe Pateks every time she goes to visit her uncle who advises people at Goldman Saks, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley – as well as suggesting I’m some kind of failure who’s “find[ing] excuses” for wanting to live modestly on what I considered to be enough –I’ve long since concluded that, even if she were real, she and I wouldn’t be remotely compatible. So I’m doing what I thought I never would; I’m not replying to her at all anymore. Let her yell into the void.

Meanwhile, I figured I could give you another installment of my attempt to completely remake my internal playlist. You’ve heard me tell you about how so many songs which, it still being a time of 80s nostalgia (maybe it’s even the political climate trying to bring those glory years back?) happen to play in the background of one public space or another and remind me of us, since they were part of that collection that we sent back and forth to each other while we were courting. As a consequence, you’ve also heard me say that, when I’m driving around the area (even the half-hour trip out to Harms Woods today, for that matter), I need to be listening to something else, rather than torturing myself with those painful reminders of times I can’t bring back. Thankfully, with the subscription to Apple Music being a part of my “new” cell phone plan (amazing to think I’ve had it for three years now), I let the algorithm take me where it thinks I might want to go.

I can’t always get away, though; some of the newer Christian rock stuff still takes me back to where we used to be, like this one…

I’m pretty sure I sent this particular song to you; the album was a major part of the soundtrack of my senior year, especially the drive to Peoria in order to take the CPA exam. It’s just the sort of music that sounds like the beginning of a long highway drive, as you’re pulling onto the expressway and accelerating up to highway speed. Likewise, it’s an invitation to ‘get in, darling, and let’s head through life together,’ and although those aren’t remotely close to the actual lyrics, that’s always been the feel of this song, and why I’ve loved it.

The problem is, you are now one of “the ghosts that haunt [me]” – to say nothing of the question who do I ask to join me on the rest of my journey at this point, anyway? – and as a result, much of the exuberance and joy has been stripped out of it, just like most of the rest of the songs we swapped between us.

At the same time, I’ve been introduced to music that the same group recorded after we graduated from college (seriously, why is it that our – and by “our,” I’m talking about what seems to be all of humanity, not just the two of us – musical tastes freeze once we’re out of university? Do we associate our peak years with that music, and as a result, never want to move on from that moment? Wouldn’t that just serve as a reminder of how things were, and that we can’t go back there again? Or is that just been because of my own experience?), and which could have held just as much meaning, if not more, than what we grew up and grew together on…

I hardly have to tell you, when you listen to that first verse, what comes to mind with it. Michael Roe doesn’t explicitly mention an aurora (and we wouldn’t be seeing Orion in late August, in any event), but you’ll remember the scene of us together, looking up at the stars and sky, after you accepted my proposal. And let’s just say, that the chorus serves as a universal sentiment between lovers and would-be lovers.

Indeed, I was listening to this on occasion throughout my travels last year, and in the months leading up to it, as I could imagine someone else who this might apply to. The thing is, laying one’s cards on the table, while it succeeded with you (much to my surprise at the time, but since then, I had begun to assume it would work in more circumstances than just ours), did not with this person who I thought might be ‘Megumi.’ As a result, while it might be overstating things to say this song has been ‘poisoned’ as well, it struggles with associations with loves that both once were and will never be, for all that I might wish otherwise.

But I can’t seem to get away from this particular singer, even after he left the group (or maybe, the group left him? Anyway, they disbanded). And thankfully, not everything he recorded had to do with one form of love song or another – which is just as well, since the whole “Jesus is my boyfriend” genre of Christian music, where His love is compared to human relationships, is doctrinally sketchy, to say the least – so I don’t see a song like this losing relevancy or adding bad memories to it going forward…

Indeed, this is something of a harsh indictment of one deciding to choose their own path, “nam[ing] yourself God,” hidden in plain sight amid the catchy hook of the tune (with a particularly bouncy, if nebulous in terms of lyrics, chorus). Interestingly, despite being more grounded in Christian principles, particularly the Calvinist dogma of the total depravity of mankind, it’s vulgar in a way that one wouldn’t expect of a “Christian” rock song – although the single word that could be considered an actual obscenity is in turns bleeped out of a familiar turn of phrase and later amusingly cut off by the song starting up again. In a way, I think he’s using the language of the very folks who would engage in such a belief in themselves, which stands to reason when you choose not to have standards.

Well, I didn’t mean to turn this into a dissertation on a certain singer, but this is a good way to explain how my musical tastes have drifted, albeit intentionally so, and what ports and harbors I’ve come to along the way. Again, I hope it amuses? moves? provokes you to think? Well, if you can listen to these and enjoy them, that will be sufficient for me for now. That, and that you can keep an eye on me for the remainder of the day, and continue to wish me luck, as I’m still going to need it.