Anyone who knows me knows I love music more than life itself. I have a running playlist on YouTube of what I call my funeral. It’s a time capsule of my favorite music and the music that makes me think of people—inside jokes, our song, songs that are meaningful to me. My hope is that one day, when I am dead, someone who remembers me listens and laughs at memories and misses me. It’s not all great music, but it means something. {D}’s song has been on there for years: “Copacabana” by Barry Manilow. Inside jokes.
I actually did my master’s thesis on the effects of popular music in history and how pop culture shaped music. I presented “History on the Hi-Fi” at a national conference. Oliver Stone was the keynote. That was a high point in my life. I decided that if I went for my PhD it would be on Spinal Tap. That never happened.
Dr. {H}, my thesis advisor—and we will call it boyfriend—talked me into taking the fall for him boning a student as chair and my thesis advisor. He would tell me ten years later that he was actually trying to talk me out of getting my PhD because he was intimidated by my intelligence. That’s kind of funny, as it was actually his fucking job description to encourage and facilitate my fucking education.
Dr. {H} had told me I was the first woman in 9 years he had slept with without paying them because he was a hideous human and would travel to Asia for sex tourism. He would compare me and tell me how much better Asian women were than me. How soft their public hair is, shit like that
When I talked to him 10 years later—actually because {D} had asked a Civil War question and Dr. {H} would have known the answer—he told me he brought a hooker home and married her, and it was great because she can’t speak English so she never talks to him. I explained that I was also the last woman he slept with without paying, and that if he thought an 80-year-old man was anything but a payday to a 30-year-old Asian hooker, he was fucking delusional. I have since taken to calling her “Chinese takeout.”
So enough about my horrible taste in men and back to music.
After what happened, I stopped listening to music. Something that was an enormous part of my life just disappeared. Music draws memories, and it was something {D} and I very much had in common. We went to concerts all the time. There was always music in the background.
I needed to not remember, so I turned it off—along with everything else in my life. This incident in my life, the rape, changed me on a molecular level. Like DNA-level shit.
We both loved—I won’t call them musicals per se—but movies with music in them. I made him watch Labyrinth for the first time (and he said he was a Bowie fan?). Now LawyerBoy and I both love musicals. We are both band dorks—well, he was an orchestra dork—so we’ve been watching musicals. We watched Moulin Rouge, West Side Story, and Chicago last weekend. I had made {D} watch Moulin Rouge once. During the “Love Medley,” {D} said they left out “I’ll be drunk all the time” from the “Heroes” part, and I corrected him.
Tonight I’m working on this guitar that is, at this point, my fucking masterpiece, and in like one more full day I will probably be done with it. I’ve had the Moulin Rouge soundtrack in my head while I work on a guitar in silence—which sounds like a bizarre time not to be listening to music.
So I turned on some Bowie for the first time in like eighteen months. This was my first foray into listening to music as a thing alone. This was a pretty big step for me to take. First song when I searched Bowie was “Heroes.”
“And you
You can be mean
And I
I’ll drink all the time
‘Cause we’re lovers
And that is a fact
Yes, we’re lovers
And that is that
Though nothing
Will keep us together
We could steal time
Just for one day
We can be heroes
For ever and ever
What d’you say?”
I burst into tears. I am fucking mean and he is drunk all the time and we were lovers and nothing would have kept us together. We stole a few days. But he is no hero. He is the antithesis of such. He is a villain and should be a felon, and that’s a fact.
I am reclaiming Bowie. He can’t have David Bowie. David Bowie is mine alone now. You can keep X it's a shitty band
That might not make sense to anyone else. But it’s a big step for me.
My Funeral Playlist if you're interested.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkgWxw3rjITCSnwY9qUdDDudLOM_A78CQ&si=FBCyvyo90l9DtH2d
Add comment
Comments