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Wednesday, July 18, 2007
GHOST IN MY HOUSE
Graham Parker
1986
Available on : Loose Monkeys
UpYours : 1999
[Buy It]
GONE
Ferlin Husky
1956
Available on : Greatest Hits
Curb : 1990
[Buy It]
MISS YOU SO
Lillian Offitt
1957
Available on : The Best of Excello Records
Excello : 1994
[Buy It]
HAVE YOU GONE
Mary Margaret O'Hara
Apartment Hunting
Outside : 2002
[Buy It]
MISSING YOU
Diana Ross
1984
Available on : The Definitive Collection
Motown : 2006
[Buy It]
PLANS I MAKE
Husker Du
New Day Rising
SST : 1985
[Buy It]
Recently I was vacationing with my family--my parents, my wife, my kids, nieces, nephews--and at the end of the first week, my wife, my younger son (he's three), and I left to come back to New York. My older son, who's six, stayed an extra week with my parents and his cousins. On the day we left, the three of us got onto a boat and waved at my older son, who was on the dock. "See you in seven days," he said, with a precision that betrayed his anxiety.
We came back to New York. For much of the next week, I went around the house in a fog. I had one kid there, but not both kids. The place was full of emptiness, haunted by it. I felt incompleted, and I tried to complete the picture. "So, are you homesick?" I said to my son when we spoke on the phone.
"Maybe a little," he said.
"Do you miss Brooklyn?"
"Yes." His voice wobbled slightly.
"Do you miss going to the park?"
"Yes." The wobbling increased.
At this point I was leading the witness. It wasn't that I wanted to break him down, exactly. But I did want to get a sense of what he was feeling about the separation. He's only six, of course, so I imagined that his feelings were more representative of some pure state, that he could admit them straightforwardly, without irony or defensiveness. Evidently I was wrong, because he recovered his composure. "Gotta go," he said. "There's a bat in the house."
During my son's week away, I had a number of other experiences of missing people, or maybe I was just tuned to that station. One friend of mine left for a long weekend in the Pacific Northwest with a friend of hers. They were having boring summers and thought that maybe the trip would reënergize them. Another old friend left to go abroad for the rest of the year. A third friend told me that he and his girlfriend were leaving New York for good. None of the departures was especially surprising. The friend in the first case always travels. The friend in the second case has spent a decent amount of her time out of the city--and some of that out of the country--for the last few years. The friend in the third case has discussed this move for the last six months. And yet, in every case, as soon as my friends told me about their trips, I began to miss them. It was difficult at first to understand why. For starters, it's not entirely appropriate to miss an adult friend. Or rather: you can miss anyone you want, but saying that you miss someone--or even acknowledging it to yourself--suggests a degree of emotional involvement that is, at least, sketchy. The world of pop music bears this out; the vast majority of songs about missing people are romantic songs. Take Graham Parker's excellent cover of R. Dean Taylor's "Ghost in My House," one of Motown's most durable rarities. There's a ghost in my house
The ghost of your memory
The ghost of the love you took from me
And it keeps haunting me
Keeps on reminding me For two lines, this is a generic song, human to human. The third line blows all that up. Let's try again, with Ferlin Husky:Since you've gone
The moon, the sun, the stars, and the sky
Know the reason why I cry
Love divine once was mine
Now you've gone For three lines, this might be platonic. I suppose you could be astronomically sad because your brother left Bakersfield. But it's not platonic. Lillian Offitt gets there even quicker, in the first word:Darling, how I miss you
Oh, darling how I miss you
You've been gone so long, baby, you done me wrong
I miss you. In all these cases, what's emphasized is powerlessness. The songs suggest that there is not only a separation, but an abandonment, that there is one party who has left, and another that has been left behind. This sentiment is broadly inapplicable to my situations: with my son, I was the only potential abandoner, and with my friends, no one abandoned anyone. Adults were just living their lives, a process that sometimes brings them closer together and sometimes takes them further apart. All these factors explained why I didn't say anything to my friends about anyone missing anyone else. "Have a good trip." That I said. "Fly safe." That I said. "I'm sure Texas will be great." That I said.
But then, left to my own devices, I thought about this situation and the other, wondered at the weight of a departure. During my son's week away, I looked in his room, looked at his toys and books, spent time imagining the moment when he'd return. If anything, it served to remind me how much I enjoy him when he's around. As for my friends, we'll continue to email during their time away, I'm sure, and since in at least two of these cases we don't see each other so often these days even when we're in the same city, I don't know why it makes any difference that they're in another city or on another continent. And yet, it makes a huge difference. In at least one of the cases, the sense of being without was almost physical at first, more than a twinge if not quite an ache. I think maybe Mary Margaret O'Hara, mostly writing one of her singularly weird love songs, catches a piece of it.I have no one to be anymore
You have no one to be anymore When someone is nearby, in matter or in mind, you come to depend on that other person's presence to know that you are present. When they go, a piece of you may go with them. Identity, a fragile thing, cannot always endure the sudden shifts. And while with a child there is ultimate control--I can tell my son when to come home, and in fact he depends upon that order--with another adult there is an ultimate absence of control. In "Missing You," which Diana Ross recorded as a tribute to Marvin Gaye after his death, this is very clear. Written by Lionel Richie and based on conversations Richie had with Ross about Gaye, it plays like a straightforward lovelorn song:Since you've been away
I've been down and lonely
Since you've been away
I've been thinking of you
Trying to understand
The reason you left me
What were you going through? Most lost-love songs at least hold out the faint hope of reunion. That's not the case here, even though the lyric won't admit it. There's a false optimism, both in the writing and in the lightness of the vocals, and this gives the song its bottomless sadness and a certain creepy beauty. It's a song of deep denial, more so than, say, "Wish You Were Here." And it's easy to understand why. People can walk toward you or away from you any time they want. They can come and they can go at will--at their will. But the person who goes always has more power than the one who remains, whether it's in friendship, in love, or in death. Movement is less sad than the observation of motion.
Toward the end of the week my son was away, I was watching TV. He's home now. It's been great. We took a long bike ride together. Movement is less sad than the observation of motion. Anyway, on TV, a man was leaving on a trip. A woman--maybe she was a girlfriend, maybe just a friend--took him to the airport. She dropped him off. She pulled away. She had to drive fast to escape the sense of being left behind.Labels: ben, country, rock, soul
posted by Ben
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