Right before you get to my work is a funeral home. In fact, the buildings surrounding my office are doctor’s offices, an old folks’ home, and this funeral parlor. Because apparently I’m writing to you on a slate, from my log cabin near my potbelly stove with my sassafras and unicycle.
Funeral parlor.
Old folks’ home.
Consarn it.
What I’m saying to you is it’s occurred to me that death is right near me all day long.
In the morning and evenings, it’s generally not busy, the funeral parlor, but sometimes as I come back from lunch in my horseless carriage, people are filing out from a funeral, and that is when I always find myself blaring just the most awful music.
The thing is, it’s so sporadic. You can go months without hitting the funeral procession, so you get lax. But the other day, as Smack My Bitch Up was blaring out my window, I started to think about music.
Not about what a terrible person I am, but about music.
It’s occurred to me lately that most of my taste in music is because of men. (Although I have to admit, my love of Smack My Bitch Up is all my own.)
Anyway, I’m almost certain that I’ve written before about how, while looking through pictures one day, I realized that I used to look like my boyfriends as time went on. I have two photo-booth shots with different boyfriends, and our hair is alike in each one. I changed my hair to match whatever boyfriend’s.
I know I must have written about that, I just know it, but can I find it? I cannot. However, while Googling the shit outta my old blog posts, somehow I found this in Google Images…
Oh my god I TOTALLY.HAD.THIS. I want to say it was a gift from my Aunt Kathy, but maybe I just bought it for m’self. Anyway, had completely forgotten this stationery and am currently dying. Will have to go to own funeral soon. And someone can blare music past it.
Anyway.
The reason I like Bob Dylan and The Beatles is because of my father, who would be playing records, literally records, while I was falling asleep, and remember back when adults could just play their records and not coddle the fuck out of children? I’ve been at people’s houses, who INVITED ME OVER, then were all, “Shhhh, the children are trying to sleep.” So the fuck what? Get them used to people talking. It’ll prepare them for the dorm.
What’s your favorite Beatles song? And if you don’t like them, just don’t comment on that. It will make me like you less. I’m serious. It’s like people who say, “I just don’t like animals.” I mean, I won’t disinvite you to my wedding, but you’ll drop a notch.
Also, my Uncle Jim, with his constant listening to records and drumming to them, and how did my grandmother not go upstairs and bludgeon him, was a giant influence. He was also a Beatles person, but what I remember most are these solo songs, which I love…
Fuckin’ Yoko, man.
Anyway, so that’s how it got started, men influencing my song choices, and then I started dating. And then, oh lord, I fell in love with someone who loved music, and there it was.
There isn’t a single Led Zepplin song I don’t love, because whether we were in his room, or down in his finished basement with the fireplace and the pillows, or even over at my house, he was playing music. And it was often Led Zepplin. I hear these songs and it’s winter (IT WAS ALWAYS WINTER in Michigan), with the snowflakes and seeing your breath when you’re making out in the car and the fire in the basement and oh my god, I loved the shit out of that stupid young boy.
Then I went to college.
Pretty much every brooding boyfriend I had (i.e., all of them) liked The Smiths, and also?
I can remember college boyfriend #74855 putting Shpritz Forte in his pompadour
while Squeeze was playing Tempted. I can see him, looking into his dorm room mirror, singing along after spending many many (many) minutes trying to convince me to give him a blowie before we left.
Hey, mom.
Then I got back together with the boy from high school, the Led Zepplin one, and his taste in music had changed, so mine changed along with it.
…It’s taken me ages to find all these songs and plunk them in here, and I have to go, and I know you’re sad I can’t trip down memory lane more, but I blame Ned for liking this…
Since I have to go, why don’t you all be my new boyfriend. What are you listening to lately? Share in the comments.
When did I become someone who says, “Share in the comments”? Click like and share for a chance to win big. Whatever with me. Where is my mind? Heh.
Musically,
June
Poor blindy Iris. A GOOD mom would have said, “Look out, Irises!” But no.
Perhaps you’re wondering who got a snout full o’claws, but are you? Are you wondering? Or do you know the answer already?
