It’s out with the old and
in with the new in January, and I’ve spent the past week purging “stuff” from my
home. I also needed a topic for this blog post, so when I stumbled upon eight coverless records for which I have no record player, I thought staring at them might act as a writing prompt. Let's see what I come up with.
“New World Symphony.” It’s
1964. I’m eleven and bored waiting in line with Mom at the dry cleaners. She permits
me to wander downstairs, where they sell records. This album’s cover appeals
to me—an orange sky over a black Russian spire. The 99-cent price tag persuades
Mom to fork over a dollar. On our hifi, the barely audible opening music builds to a sudden crescendo and initiates me into a new world of emotions.
Verve Folkways’ “Mixed
Bag.” I’m sixteen. Richie Havens moans that he’s “got the blues for my baby
down by the San Francisco Bay” as Clint, Denny, and I (two learners' permits
and one license strong) sit at a metal table in an East Village club.
We memorized all the songs on this album before we went. We order ice cream sodas because we're underage but no less intoxicated about how amazing adult life is going to be, if sometimes painful.
“Joni Mitchell” on the
Reprise label, produced by David Crosby. Songs like “Sisotowbell Lane” and “I
Had a King,” plus Joni’s guitar and vocal style, sounded whimsical and daring. I wished I could emulate her sense of adventure, but I only had Mondays off from my summer au pair job.
"Songs by Debussy," with the elegant Connoisseur Society label. The label made me buy it. Dad was footing the bill for college so I could become a schoolteacher—"that," he
said, "or a nurse." I wished for a part in the spring musical by senior year. One evening, an undergrad standing near my dorm room heard Debussy and decided I was the girl for him—at least until graduation when he kissed me off with a two-album set of Gershwin’s songs. Sitting in that crummy dorm room
across the hall from my floor’s shower room, the two of us tearing up over tracks like “The Sunken Cathedral” had always been innocent in my memory. Just now, though, I’m wondering why my boyfriend-to-be was in that location in the
first place.
"Bonnie Raitt."
Her red hair on the green cover promised sultry tracks like “Since I Fell for
You.” It's senior year, and I'm learning to tap dance to “You Got to Know How” after many long days of putting in my student teaching hours. Dormmates
who live one floor below me see me in the spring musical and ask that I don’t
forget the people who put up with tap dancing overhead while trying to sleep. I wonder where those
women are now? My Debussy-loving boyfriend entered the Navy and married a
redhead who resembled Bonnie.
"L’essential Edith
Piaf." I promised my father I'd teach school right after I spent a year in Paris. A job as a receptionist and sleeping in a fifth-floor garret left me a few francs to buy records like this one, and the dazzling performance of a French actor in a Moliere play got me thinking about directing theater. I had a job back home teaching tenth graders but worked as a summer intern in a stock company, so I knew how to help direct school plays. I didn't read the books I had to teach when school started. By the end of the year, when the school didn't invite me back, I knew how Piaf felt. The summer stock company took me back with a $30-a-week job directing
adult actors performing theater for children, where I met and directed my husband-to-be.
“Francesca Da Rimini.” After a series of jobs as a low-paid theater grunt I'd taken to ensure that my out-of-work actor husband and I had health insurance, this opera spoke to my mood: romantic, desperate, and overwhelmed. My grandmother
left me her Steinway, and I turned to voice lessons, coaches, and sheet music. Obsessed with opera, I wrote
a libretto and shared it with a young composer from my choir job. He came to our apartment a month later with a beautiful, heart-wrenching overture. A few months later, he died from AIDS. I don't know who has his music.
Lastly, I'm looking at Elly Ameling’s “Souvenirs.” I learned songs from this record to sing at recitals, but was close to the cut-off point for singers to enter contests when my parents first heard my trained voice. They said they’d never realized I had a passion for music. Maybe I’d never told them in so many words. I began to think I ought to try writing.
I'm putting these records back in the closet. I didn't know they'd evoke so many memories, and I’m surprised how often France came into my mind. I was fifty before I did some genealogy research and learned that Dad’s American roots came from Huguenot transplants from Normandy. Normandy, where French friends showed me Bebussy's “sunken
cathedral.” Normandy, where my father won a Purple
Heart and lost many of his band of brothers in World War Two. I don't think Dad had a clue about his connection.
Now, there’s a writing
prompt! How about a story where a character like my dad fights on land his
ancestors once owned, but he doesn’t know that? What genre would I use? Family
Saga? Supernatural? Historical Romance? This idea has real potential. Right now, I only have time
for a blog post.
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