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Thursday, June 28, 2007
KEEP ON CHURNIN'
Wynonie Harris
1952
Available on : Bloodshot Eyes: The Best of Wynonie Harris
Rhino : 1994
[Buy It]
TRY ME
Asha Puthli
She Loves to Hear the Music
CBS/Columbia : 1975
[Buy It]
EN MELODY
Serge Gainsbourg
Histoire de Melody Nelson
Polygram : 1971
[Buy It]
REIN RAUS
Rammstein
Mutter
Umvd : 2001
[Buy It]
I have a friend who recently slept with a guy she just met. That's not extraordinary. But he had three arms! No. He didn't. I guess I'm trying to make the situation more remarkable than it was. It was an ordinary what-for: she broke up with her boyfriend about five months ago, went on a few dates, didn't meet anyone she liked, and then she met (and liked) this guy at a party, and he asked her out, and they went to a restaurant, and he ordered them a bottle of wine, and later they held hands under the table, and still later he walked her home through a light rain, and she invited him up, and they sat on the couch for twenty minutes watching TV, and then they went into the bedroom, got strip-jack naked, and made the beast with five arms.
Anyway, a few days later on the phone, she told me that she had hooked up with this guy and I felt a twinge of annoyance that wasn't exactly annoyance. What it exactly was, sadness, requires some explanation.
I have a negative reaction to these hookups, not a moral objection but an emotional one. In one respect, the reason is obvious. Deep down, there's some element of competitiveness. It’s not that I have designs on these women - I am married - though I can imagine some version of me, in ramified time, having designs. But there's also something else. When I hear these accounts, I feel eighty years old, tired and rueful. There's something in a hookup story that seems to bring the participants one step closer to death. It's hard to explain, or maybe pitifully simple. So long as you are hopeful for sex - or romance, because that's usually the shape that casts the shadow - the world is a place of potential joy. When the target has been acquired, well, then what?
Let me come at it from another angle. If a friend were to tell me that she just had a promisingly flirtatious conversation with a guy she met at a party, I would feel a surge of excitement for her. Even my initial sense of competition would subside. But conversation is sustainable over long periods of time, partly because it sublimates other energies, and partly because it has content other than itself (the weather, or baseball, or literature, or whatever). But sex is often about itself, especially early in a relationship or before there's any relationship at all. So the needle spikes. People get off. And then, sadly, slightly, the life goes out of life, at least for a little while. (It's just a theory, but so is evolution. A few days after my friend told me about the hookup, she called back to tell me that she was in a pit of despair. The walls weren't so high that she couldn't see to the tops, but they were slippery.)
I have a feeling that maybe I've gone too far in the wrong direction, and I don't want to ignore the other side of the coin. Sadness or no, drab emotional realism never got anyone laid. It's like that episode of "You Bet Your Life" where Groucho talks to a woman about her future plans. GROUCHO: "Now suppose you became a famous actress, and then you met somebody you liked and got married. Would you be willing to quit acting and be a housewife and a mother?"
WOMAN: "Well, I think if you keep your feet on the ground you can combine both. That's what I'd like to do."
GROUCHO: "Well, if you keep your feet on the ground, you'll never be a mother." So here's a set of songs about the joys of not keeping your feet on the ground. One is by the great American R&B singer Wynonie Harris. One is by the Indian jazz/soul/disco siren Asha Puthli. One is by the French provocateur Serge Gainsbourg. And one is by the German heavy metal demons and inadvertent comedians Rammstein.Labels: ben, sex
posted by Ben
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