6. your life is a musical (perhaps filled with “jets and sharks” dancing, snapping of the fingers, silly fire-escape ballads-you know how i love west side story references) what would be the soundtrack to said musical? give me 18 songs or less that take us through your entire life-not just this year. explain what those songs mean to you and why you chose then. for example: one of my songs would be “jeremiah was a bullfrog” because throughout my childhood i remember my mother loving that song and it would come on and we would dance and sing at the top of our lungs. another would have to be the illini fight song as it reminds me of everything u of i…football block, nights at murphy’s, swaying with my friends in the stands of memorial stadium. another would be an italian song i know by eros, because it reminds me of my 8 months in italy, the places i went, the men i kissed (haha)…everything. so i don’t have all 18, but you get the idea and now you have to tell!
i will attempt to put these in chronological order...
1. beethoven's third symphony, "the eroica"
when i was a very small child, my mother and i lived with my grandpa jack. just after my birth, my parents weren't in the most agreeable of attitudes, and so, my mother clutched to her newly born son and fled to the house of her father. for the 3 years between my birth and my parents' marriage, i spent my days in the company of my grandfather, a stubborn, brooklyn-irish former-coalminer. he drank. he smoked cigars. he said my mom's name as "law-ree" instead of "lore-ee" like everyone else. our days were simple. we watched what he wanted to watch on tv. we went where he wanted to go. but most importantly, because he really despised telelvision and his knees didn't allow us much mobility, we listened to what he wanted to hear. mostly classical music. a few old standards here and there. some dino. some ella. a bit of old blue eyes. but mozart, chopin, stravinsky, bach, and especially, beethoven dominated our ears. to this day, i hear the eroica and i also hear my grandfather cry out to lawree to bring him his cigars.
2. wedding bell blues by the fifth dimension
3. downtown by petula clark
both of these songs remind me of my mother while i was growing up. whenever it was raining or one of us was sad or grandpa jack wasn't home to dictate what we had to listen to, she'd play these songs and we'd dance around the living room and sing at the top of our lungs. it's very much like the "ain't no mountain high enough" scene in "step mom". and, no, i don't think jumping around in my pj's singing "come on and marry me, biiiiiiill, i love you still. i always will!" has anything to do with me being gay today.
4. judy garland's somewhere over the rainbow
5. chim chim cheree from mary poppins
two more songs from my childhood... both from after my parents got married and my brother was born. both from when we were poorer than poor. "cereal with water and a splash of milk" poor. "a cooler for a refridgerator" poor. my father, the now-medical-miracle, was born with a heart defect. at 13, he had open-heart surgery, a surgery that would last him until he was 30. it didn't quite make it. at 29, he started having problems, and keeping him alive kept the family bank account quite empty. the surgery he had at 31, not only saved his life, but put him in the record books... to this day, medical students study the procedure my father received, but none of them know the story behind it. anyhow, these songs were from 2 of the 3 records my brother and i shared as kids. we had the mary poppins soundtrack, a single of judy garland's somewhere over the rainbow (from the wizard of oz, which would later be the only movie we owned as kids), and the haunted house sounds record people would play at halloween (which my brother and i played year round). worth noting though, we knew all the words to the songs in mary poppins and somewhere over the rainbow without having seen the movies they were from. actually, we didn't know mary poppins was a movie at all. and the chim chim cheree we knew was slightly different because the record we had was warped, and chim chim cheree played much slower and sadder than it is in the movie. "now as the ladder of life 'as been strung, you may think a sweep's on the bottommost rung."
6. the canticle of the sun
yes, a christian song, but let's remember kids, brett was raised very catholic. i went to church twice a week while i was in grade school - wednesdays and sundays. my family didn't eat meat any friday of the year, not just during lent like all the other catholics i knew as a child. we prayed the rosary on a regular basis. i went to confession 4 times a year. we went to church for both easter and christmas vigils. grandpa jack would have it no other way. this song was always my favorite one to sing at church. it was so upbeat and happy about god. my favorite verse: praise to the wind, that blows through the trees, the seas mighty storms, the gentlest breeze, they blow where they will, they blow where they please, to please the lord.
7. too sexy by right said fred
during my childhood, most my summer afternoons were spent at the manners park public swimming pool. my brother, the clark kids (my 6 cousins), and i lived at the pool during the summer. frying our skin, eating pizza, swimming 'til we were beyond pruny. they always blared a radio station out over the pa system, and i can't really remember much of the music, but i do remember this song. we'd catwalk the diving board. we'd snicker to ourselves because we said "sexy". we'd put our towels on like capes or dresses then whip them off to prove just how too sexy we were.
8. zombie by the cranberries
9. simon and garfunkle's mrs. robinson
jr. high. unlike most, i loved junior high. i think i was such a late bloomer that at the time i simply had no idea just how awkward i was. i look back now and wonder how i wasn't miserable, but i wasn't, so... go me! zombie makes me think of the countless hours my cousin megan and i would spend locked up in one of our bedrooms, creating... whether it be poetry, drawings, magazines, fall fashion lines, sculptures, collages, whatever. we were artists who hungered and who were pained, and our music needed to reflect that. thus, we reconnected with our tormented irish roots. the simon and garfunkle song just reminds me of the good times i had with friends in junior high. we loved "oldies", and this song was hilarious to us because we had a teacher named mrs. robinson. unfortunately, none of us were old enough to have seen "the graduate" and we were never sure why she was uncomfortable with us singing it to her.
10. in requiem by i don't know who (i tried googling it, but couldn't find the song i know)
11. an irish blessing by the taylorville high school madgrigal singers
these two ditties come from my four years at good old t.h.s. both are choral pieces because, well, i was very choral in high school. i was president of concert choir, afterall. the first reminds me of my two years in all-state honors choir, where i met lots of incredibly dorky people, and 6 truly wonderful ones. in particular, this song, though it's about death, makes me think of jenna. if i wasn't gay, i'm sure we would have dated and fallen in love. now, she lives in singapore with her husband i don't like. sad how life works like that. guess the song was appropriate afterall. the other, an irish blessing, has been the closing song for every t.h.s. madrigal performance ever. hearing or even reading it takes me back to the friends and experiences i had those four years. "may the sun shine warm upon your face, and rains fall soft upon your fields."
12. another lonely day by ben harper
13. ciagarettes & chocolate milk by rufus wainwright
these songs are my first two years of college. rufus singing about all the indulgence, and ben singing about all the pain. freedom measured with responsibility. excess tempered with need. it's all there.
14. the alma mater by the other guys
i had to include a song by the other guys, the acapella singing group i lived with for a year in college. thus, i picked the alma mater because while i loathed living with them, they do the school real justice with this one. it's football and the quad and late nights on green street and sleepovers with special and concerts at foellinger and going to class in your pj's and the union and working for orientation with my bestest friends and everything illinois. well done, boys.
15. jane by ben folds
this was the last thing beth (seen here) gave me during our friendship. after all of it kind of ended, she sent me one last birthday gift that following summer - a lovely glass bowl hand decorated, the lyrics to this song scrawled throughout the bowl's curves. and i had heard the song before, but i guess i had never really listened because reading the bowl, it was like hearing that song for the first time.
16. tom tom club's genius of love
"what're you gonna do when you get out of jail?" "i'm gonna have some fun." "what do you consider fun?" "fun, natural fun." hello, these are like the most phenomenal song lyrics ever written. for one and a half years, i lived with one of the greatest people i have ever met or ever will meet. forever, this song will make me think of drew and the amazing, super fantastic times we had together. me. drew. a glass door. a desk. and a room full of feminists. i'll have to explain this later.
17. shiny disco balls by who da funk
oh, the boys. dancefloors, booze, and my first gay friends. we were an inseparable pack of crazies. it was the first time in my life that i was truly friends with boys. i had never had that before. and it was good. now, we've all gone our own ways, but this song puts them in the room. applying body glitter. wearing red pants. donning the party coat. rocking sunglasses at night. and being generally fabulous.
18. beautiful life by the fisher band
this song is short. it's not even a song. it's a chorus for a car commercial. but it could not more accurately describe the 5 months i have lived in chicago. short. real. optimistic. hopeful.
"hey child... a big world is out there waiting... outside you will find, there is love all around you.... it makes you want to say that it's a beautiful life and it's a beautiful world and it's a beautiful time to be here."
holy shit, as tara reid would say, that was long.
sorry. it's a been a life.
posted by brett @ 2:41 PM
6 Comments:
you lived with the other guys? what?
um... yes.
sophomore year, i lived with ben, matt, and aaron... all of the illustrious "the other guys".
it was quite the musical experience.
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