Sunday, May 31, 2015

The effects

(this is a refresh of an old post, from 2015 or so) 


So, at my boss's direction, and I may have written about this before, I don't feel like checking, I have been listening to sales training CDs and tapes (in the Volvo, where we still have a very nice cassette player, thank you) in the car.  People like Brian Tracy and Zig Ziglar, each of whom are very interesting figures, with considerable wisdom for me to soak in, if only I let it.  Which I am working at. I have therefore not been listening to that much music in the car, as I have in effect been working as I drive, as best I can.

So, after refreshing the music CDs in the car, as I chronicled yesterday, I've been listening to some tunes. Yesterday I listened to the Costello, and there were some good songs on there.  This morning, on the way to a meeting, I threw Stephen Merritt's Obscurities in the player.  I bought this CD when the Magnetic Fields came to the Cradle a couple of years ago.

I have a mixed relationship with Merritt.  On the one hand, he is one of the greatest songwriters of his generation, and incredible librettist, for lack of a better word, a writer of the words of songs.  On the other, he can be a little arch, sometimes unsufferably. But today, with my spirit somewhat undernourished with song, and with me being a little bit tired from generally working pretty damned hard at getting my practice up and running and dadding and husbanding and whatnot, this song ("Plant White Roses") hit me hard.  I literally started crying while driving. It happens sometime.




It is, in so many ways, the perfect little love song, and I like this version of it.  Clean and pure.

I wrote once about reading A Suitable Boy and how good Vikram Seth is at -- in the romance of Lata and Kabir -- capturing the intensity of young love, and how the sensation of young love is what we all (meaning me) yearn for at times.  This song, or at least this version of it, did it again.  Whoops.  The first verse is perfect.

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