Laugh Laugh
I was up late last night.
I set aside the entire day to catch up. I had a stack of magazines and newspapers. And as I was making headway, I got a phone call from my mother, she wanted to tell me what the doctor said.
My mother doesn’t believe in illness, she believes sheer determination can defeat any malady. But when she lost her balance and her hands started to feel like sandpaper she finally picked up the phone and made an appointment with a neurologist. Two. And they both said the same thing. She needed an operation. Which she’d vowed to never have, she’s eighty three years old, been there, done that.
But yesterday’s doctor got in her face. If she doesn’t submit to the knife she’ll fall and break her hip and end up in a nursing home and then a wheelchair and then she won’t even be able to push the buttons on the wheelchair because her hands won’t work. He made her laugh, he convinced her, but she’s still scared. Who wouldn’t be?
And when I hung up the light had changed, the sun had set, the mood was different.
Eventually I answered a slew of e-mail, did my back exercises, and got hooked on TV. Although I’ve got a brand new set and pay for all the channels I haven’t turned it on in months. I ended up catching Kim Kardashian on "The Tonight Show". I remarked to myself what a dunce she was, but then I remembered the nitwits on the show when I used to watch way back when, when Johnny used to banter with them.
She was on because she was selling something. Is there anybody in America who’s not selling something? I expect to run into the homeless guy outside Baja Fresh and have him hawking knockoff watches. Expect that school teacher to be working on a set of videos that will inspire nursery schoolers. Everyone wants to be a rapper? No, everybody wants to be an entrepreneur, the new Steve Jobs. I mean if you don’t believe in yourself, you’re a loser…
And when I was done strengthening my back, I checked to see what was on the DVR. And found an episode of "Survivor". I loved it once, but that was before the contestants became students of the game. If only they went to college, studied something worthwhile. Then again, higher education doesn’t teach you how to be famous.
And after watching some YouTube videos about next year’s skis, I finally got in my car for the long trek over the hill to the Valley.
This is the life I used to live. Long after midnight. When the strivers were all tucked in and I had the landscape to myself.
And when I turned off the 405 on to Mulholland, I heard a song…
I’d been pushing the buttons. From country to soft rock to comedy. But I settled on this gem on the sixties channel. And as I wound down Longbow, I had an urge to talk to you, about the mood in the Beau Brummels’ "Laugh Laugh".
My favorite was always "Just A Little". But listening to "Laugh Laugh" creeped me out and inspired me at the same time. Brought me right back to the sixties. When I was addicted to the radio and was isolated. They speak about the days before automobiles, before television, you’ve got no idea what it was like before the Internet. You couldn’t find like-minded people, you were beholden to your family, the people in your school, you created a better, fantasy world in your brain and the soundtrack was music. I remember riding in the backseat of the station wagon, looking out the window, letting my mind drift as the landscape whirred by.
And this exact same landscape was unfolding in my brain last night. Western Massachusetts on a rainy afternoon. You remember family trips, don’t you? I got the mood of "Laugh Laugh" forty years ago, but I just hadn’t lived long enough to articulate it. The feeling of being so…lonely.
Oh, I knew what loneliness was, but then I thought the antidote was being popular. That’s what I prayed for, in front of the bathroom mirror, to be popular.
Then you graduate from school, you’re set free, and it’s worse. You’ve got endless opportunity but even more failure, it’s so much more difficult than they told you, than you expected. People pair up to avoid the pitfalls, others are overwhelmed by the strain and take their lives, and the rest of us keep on keepin’ on. Through friends, relationships, everything changes, or as Paul Simon sang, everything put together sooner or later falls apart.
And the only constant is the records. The ones they still spin on the radio. Sure, some of them made us dance, others caused us to sing along, but then there were others that got under our skin, that seemed to understand us. We shared our life with these records. They were there through our triumphs and our losses. And no matter how far we stray, they’re always willing to take us back. Because they know life is hard. Both meaningless and meaningful. A conundrum.
Or, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, if you want to know which way the wind blows, put on an old 45. Crystallized therein are our "Catcher In The Rye", our "Casablanca". An entire generation was on either one side of the fence or the other, making music or listening. Or both.
