The Sound Track To Your Life

Right Click n Play, Mazzy Star

I wish I came up with that phrase above but no. JB105 constantly uses it to promote their 80's retro to their audience. How can the 80's be retro? But there you are..it's been over for 30 years!

Shit...30 years...

I spend an undue amount of time cruising Youtube for songs I haven't heard in years, then find a flac recording of them and steal them, or if not that, then to joggle some memories of my life when a particular song was hot. I'll tend to post them on Facebook to the very few fans of that song that give a rat's ass. Many times my memory and the song's placement on the hit list don't jive. But there it is, dated and stamped...I guess my memory isn't what it used to be. To be honest too, there are gaps in time back then when my life wasn't producing any significant signposts. You work, sleep and slog along and those months become a blur. Why would you remember redundancy? Any songs that were popular then were not paired to any remarkable event in my life at the time. And then there are the “Holy shit..I had forgotten all about that song!” flashbacks.

Mazzy Star's “Fade Into You” was hitting it's highest peak in September 1994. The girl singing it was Hope Sandoval,. She was pathologically shy and would only do live stage work IF the lights were not shown on her. She'd also refused to engage the audience or give them eye contact and instead stared at the floor while immersed in darkness. Very rarely would she do any work and be easily seen doing it w/o some coercion. To this day she hides. Hence the expression, “shoe gazer music” came into being. It was popular for a bit back when alternative was really about alternative.

Sept. '94 found me unemployed and typing off resumes like a bandit. I had finished up a year long battle with a former employer after hiring three, yes, 3 lawyers to make their lives shit. Boy, when I have a vendetta, I sure go balls to the wall doing it. Don't worry about me now, I am old and too tired to mount such a offensive. AND...looking back on it all, I now see I should have not wanted their heads on a platter and just settle for the cash buyout. But hindsight is always that, hindsight.

I didn't know it but in a month's time I would be hired by a place that dealt with the deaf population on the East Bay. I didn't know I'd be learning ASL either. It's amazing how you don't know anything really about the future and how it'll steer your life in a different direction. You can make plans, point your life a particular goal and still be surprised at that new details you have to deal with. You can't anticipate everything! And this is happening now still. When does it ever stop?

I didn't know I'd meet a girl there who was sort of similar to Hope Sandoval, extremely shy and had protective walls three feet thick and 20 feet high. Funny how sometimes, and maybe just barely, a song dovetails into your life just a bit. More likely, you MAKE the song your own even though it's lyrics may have very little to do with your life at all. “OMG...That's about ME!” (say that with a teen girl's shrill voice)

So how do you approach a shy girl like Sandoval or Beth as I'll call her? You go very slowly and you carefully worm your way through the cracks in the wall. But, since her radar was on it's highest setting, she saw any attempt to “reach her” as a breakdown in security. But, there were times I manage to have her lift that protection and see what I knew was there, a too sensitive heart that at one time, or more likely, many times, was dragged across barbed wire. So she did the only thing she knew, she walled up to protect it.

I never managed to get through though for any appreciable amount of time. Her fear was too great to allow it. After some months, she quietly quit that job and moved back into her Mom's house in Bristol I was told. Gone forever. Perhaps now after years, she has managed to trust...somewhat. It's too bad, she was one of the few people I knew whose heart was “good,” even if it was a bit banged up.

That month also had me driving a Dodge 400 convertible that was falling apart. I had salt and pepper hair at 30 and was dying it. I also thought then that being 30 was “old.” At that point in you life it is because you are expelled forever from the 20 Something set. Expelled from waking up hung over in your car in a beach parking lot. Expelled from making rash decisions that can haunt you for years. Expelled from taking last minute road trips to “we don't know where yet”. Being 30 demands you act like an adult. Just the sound of that number alone will do it. You brag to those around you then about how mature you are, and your just 30 friends brag right back. You talk of careers, first homes, marriage and buying “sensible” cars. Sensible meaning a 90's “mini van.”

At 56, 30 now seems to me just a more sober version of a 20 Something, but still not knowing life well enough yet and winging it as best as you can.

Ask me, if I make it to 70, what “56” really means...and life will still be doing what it always does, not showing you the future at all and surprising you...and there will be a hit song to mark it.