Mysterious Ways (This Must Be the Place Pt. II) in a Guest Star
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“When we’re young we set our hearts upon some beautiful idea. Maybe something from a holy book or French Philosophia.” ~Guggenheim Grotto (“Philosophia”) “One day you will look back and you’ll see where you were held now by this love. …Follow this feeling…” ~U2 (“Mysterious Ways”) Mysterious Ways (This Must Be the Place Pt. II) In a guest star appearance on The Simpsons in the mid 90s, Johnny Cash voices a mystical spirit-coyote to give Homer some insightful and amusing guidance. A day or so later, Homer recalls the memory of his experience, then further presses his mystical friend for more advice. With the echoing sound of sage wisdom, the ethereal voice of Johnny Cash says: “This is just your memory. I can’t give you any new information.” This quintessential bit of Simpsons humor is always good for a chuckle. Although, it makes me wonder if it’s true that we can’t get new information from an old memory. If we can’t, what good is there in reflecting on them? Along with an exploration of this question, I’d like to touch upon a significant moment in a person’s life where an imprint much deeper than memory is made. This span of time, which usually occurs around the age of fourteen, sets a person on their pathway towards personally- selected influences and passions. I often find myself drawn into a reverie of memories from my mostly-anxious and highly emotional teenage years. In some cases, with a genuine fugue of focus, I am able to generate an immersive memory palace, replete with the sights, sounds and smells—but most importantly, the feelings—of my much-younger self. As I do, I remain cognizant that memories are subjective and tend to reflect our current selves more than our past selves. Also: they are surprisingly malleable, and we run the risk of changing them every time they are accessed. The simplest example of this is the way we assume, for the sake of continuity, the central figure in the memory (us as we were then) is the same person who remembers (us as we are now). My family’s three-year-old cat, Everett, will often play this out as he tries and fails to duplicate his proudest moment as a kitten. About once a week, he jumps up on a shelf in the basement in order to slip through a kitten-sized gap between a wall and the ceiling. He then stands by the gap and meows, not able to comprehend why he can’t fit in. This happens because, once as a 4-month- old, he got up on that shelf and slipped through the gap; he then went exploring where no cat has gone before. As we all stood there, staring at the hole, worried he might not come back safely, he did. At once, his small kitten-face appeared, covered in dust and cobwebs, so he could meow at us and turn away to continue his journey. What I need to remind myself is this: while Everett remembers the event and likely knows his way around in the dark caverns of his imagination (and our basement ceiling), he has no sense of the fact that he used to be small. If you put on INXS’ Welcome To Wherever You Are when I’m in the room, I will be instantly transported back to 8th grade. The lead song, “Questions,” has a very unique and particular muted trumpet riff which is meant to invoke the spirit of the Egyptian Sphinx; and to my mind, this attempt succeeds every time. 8th grade for me lands between Fall of ’94 and Spring of ’95. Although our home in Dayton was much the same as it was when we’d moved in three years earlier, this is a span of time with no horizons of us moving in nor moving out.1 The unheimlich redolence of Eau-du-Chad in my bedroom had slowly faded, to be replaced at once by the overbearing and everlasting linger of wood stain on a new dresser in my room which belonged to me but was never mine. On the radio was KDWB, playing Prince’s Cream,2 along with smash hits like Counting Crows “Mr. Jones,” Tag Team’s “Whoomp! There It Is!” and US3’s “Cantaloop” (of which, the end-of-song trumpet solo was an endless inspiration, since I played trumpet in band). In the afternoons, back from school, my ritual included a daily dip into a perpetually replenished bag of “atomic sour” gumballs. These were made by a local confectioner (with a sparse “boutique” label on the bag) and were, as far as I knew, only found at the F&F gas station up on 13 and Highway 101. I first tried one in 5th grade in the back of the school bus and I still chewed one per day three years later.3 There is one other nearly-ubiquitous recollection which comes barreling towards me whenever I think back to the mid 90s, and it’s the thrill of technology, availability and endless entertainment which came from having both the internet and satellite TV for the first time. We lived so far from civilization in Dayton that cable wasn’t an option, but we soon got DirecTV, with its fancy controllers and channels into the 500s. And as AOL subscribers with a 56k modem, I have a strong and almost cliché association to the famous jingle which signified a successful connection: “Welcome! You’ve got mail!” With all of our technological dreams becoming a reality, it seemed as though the future was now. The Fall of ’94 was also a significant moment for me in terms of artistic influence, especially music, as my mom had inducted herself into an album-owning club where she could select and receive, by mail, one new compact disc each month (for only one penny). I forget the name of this popular club/scam which ran from the early to mid 90s, but check the footnotes in case I remember.4 At this time, she loaded up on a spree of new albums, creating a moment of flourishing on our home stereo system. I got my sensibilities for great music from her, I believe, and it was her audio cassette of Graceland which introduced me to Paul Simon; leading eventually to The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and the range of benefits which come with truly great music. Regarding the CD club, highlights from this cache of new albums included: INXS’ Welcome to Wherever You Are, U2’s Achtung Baby, Live’s Throwing Copper, En Vogue’s Funky Divas and the R.E.M. masterwork, Out of Time. It was a glorious haul. 1 This sense of a repeating moment which includes no awareness of its beginning nor end is defined in great detail in my essay “Spots of Time” in set four. 2 2 or 3 years after its release. Prince is a bit overplayed in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. 3 Blue and red were the most sour. There’s no way candy could be that sour without involving unsafe chemicals… 4 Columbia House. The catch was: after the first year, CDs were priced at $18-$20. Members had the option to unenroll at any time (otherwise it would have been illegal). Any age is a good age to discover a new influence or develop a new interest. For some reason, though, those interests and influences which find us between the ages of 13 and 15 are extra strong—as though they occupy their own top tier. Not only in terms of how we remember them, but in how they change our trajectory into our futures.5 These influences might be certain friends, certain classes in school, particular TV shows or musical acts which happened to be popular at the time; but to a 14-year-old mind in this particular state, there is something more substantial, more true, more emotionally evocative about these golden experiences than the silver and bronze which will eventually follow later in life.6 It is as though we suddenly find ourselves, in a fledgling state, physically and intellectually mature enough to begin to explore. With this sense of flourishing, we will want to let an impression take hold: one which indicates a polestar of who we are and what we are capable of doing with our lives. Like the chick who follows the mother hen, we follow the lead of whomever we admire—assuming somehow that their way of being will also be our way. Some events and influences from these times are only background, of course. This sort of thing, like an episode of Blossom, can be recalled with nearly-nostalgic joy. Even those clearly dubious artifacts, like M.C. Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” (or even “Soft and Wet”), are somehow palatable—even if only momentarily. To visit actual places again, in person, if from the vacuum of ten or twenty untouched years, can bring a thrill of a haunted presence from one’s own past. If these are just memories, which can’t give us any new information, value is found in recognizing those things which we would choose again, given everything we know now. To discover something new within such a memory is to discover something new about oneself. U2’s Achtung Baby is my purest example of such philosophia.7 I can state with an undoubting conviction that I would not be who I am today if I had never heard this tremendous album.