Pop Music

The air has that leaves-brittle-and-bright-as-confetti feel, and I want to go driving with pop music playing and the windows down. "I'm not strong, and you'll find out, how the girls love rock and roll..." I wanna warble. I want to be on the way to a high school football game, and be sitting on the winning side. I'd like to wear a scarf but no coat, and corduroy trousers. I'd probably look a little like a Sears ad.

What is it about pop music? Well-crafted pop music is like a tapeworm: it sneaks into your brain and devours you. You can't help being manipulated by it, and you like it, although you feel guilty. Once it takes over a moment, it's like a watermark, you can't hear the song without triggering the memory, and you never have the memory without thinking of the song.

Some pop songs end up being tenaciously enduring, but you can't predict that beforehand. Some are amazing songs but become dated, while others have some timeless groove, so the song sounds as if it were just released. Personally, I think one of the most perfect pop songs of all time is "You Can't Always Get What You Want." I think that's a hard song to hear without wanting to do a huge head-bopping dance that will encompass bystanders and perhaps even nearby dogs before you're done. It is hard to be completely unhappy after hearing that song.

Anyone else? Got a timeless wonder? Whotcha fancy?

Autumn

The weather is perfect. I love being able to put a jacket on, and extra covers on my bed. For some reason, autumn always seems so cozy. It would be nice to jettison my wretched day job and begin a round-the-world journey (funded, of course, by a grant that would allow me to live without worrying about money), but even without such a plan, autumn holds that kind of adventure and promise.

Who knows, maybe it will come to that. I'm opening a show on Friday, and for once, I'm actually in it enough that my performance will be reviewed with the show. There's no squeaking by without a mention now, no peripheral character. I'm glad, of course, but it's overwhelming. I'm not used to getting what I want. I love this play. I love being in it, I love the people, I enjoy spinning out the scenes and building up the story bit by bit. I adore getting a laugh, I do internal dances of joy when we get to the happy ending (complete with a big romantic kiss - yay!), I even relish the bits where I get beaten up. I also love fainting and being carried up the stairs. The show is a great big swashbuckling romp of a delight, and no matter what the reviews say, I will enjoy it.

But I feel exposed. As a perfectionist, I don't like criticism, as I will obsess and worry about all the things I got "wrong". The possibility exists that the reviewers might not enjoy it, and no matter how grown up and mature I am about that, I will be disappointed. I want to spend my life working as an actress - it's a nightmare to think reviewers will tell me I should scurry back to my day job.

Logically, the reviews won't matter. I love the show - I'll still love the show, no matter what gets said. And I doubt I can stop acting for long, no matter how discouraging a review may or may not be.

But isn't it about time I'm forced to accustom myself to getting what I want?

A True Story

My grandmother and I are negotiating the kitchen of her snug farmhouse in the middle of South Carolina peach farming country. She is nearly ninety, her white hair set off with a bright blue outfit, and she is very pleased with herself, because despite the fact that she recently had a hip replaced and should not be doing any more than absolutely necessary, despite the fact that I made it absolutely clear that I wanted to take her out to lunch, she has foiled this plan by having lunch already prepared. It's the South - you haven't visited unless you've been fed. In addition, she is meeting my boyfriend, and because we live in Chicago, she is determined to give him a "real taste of the South". Of course, he grew up for the most part in Pensacola, Florida, so he's tasted the South before. (When she discovers the Florida connection, she exclaims, with a big smile and note of relief, "Why, you're not a Yankee at all!!" Sigh.)

Grandma hobbles and I bustle. She has at least cheated the meal by buying most of it at a barbecue place, but she has made two gleaming, golden pecan pies with her own hands. We are in the midst of reheating barbecue and slicing tomatoes when there is a knock at the door.

"Good afternoon, ma'am. Maurice said I should come by about noon, twelve thirty for my gun." The older gentleman wears a hunting cap and a shirt with a nametag, "ROY". My uncle Maurice repairs and makes guns, and Roy has had some emergency work done on his gun so that he can go dove hunting this afternoon. The season starts today. I don't know what Roy does with his days, but his skin is reddish from being outside often. His deference to my grandmother seems genuine. Does it stem from shyness or respect? No matter which, it pleases her.

"He's not back yet, but he told me you'd be by, he should be here shortly. Roy, son, would you like a slice of pecan pie?"

"Oh, no, ma'am, I don't have no bottom teeth." He smiles just widely enough as if to be showing his gummy lack of tooth, but you can't see much. "I'll just go out and pick you folks some peaches."

In about fifteen minutes, he is back with two enormous shopping bags of peaches - the bags are full, and the peaches themselves are massive. By the time he returns, Maurice has brought Roy's gun home and everyone wanders off happy. My mother and I are sent home with one of the two bags of peaches to divide between us.

We haul softball-sized peaches on and off of planes and buses and finally into my apartment. All this hauling seems like trouble until the gluttony of peaches begins. Every time I eat one, I think of Roy, and how proud and ashamed and glad I am to be from the South.

And for the record, the pecan pie was amazing.

And I am

listening to Kanye West, and feeling hip and urban. (I am, actually, very hip, and urban.)

It leaves me fretful, though. I dislike such a liberal use of the n-word, but issues of race are touchy. I do (illogically) feel some burden of guilt for the evil of slavery, as a Southerner. If the inequality the system of slavery introduced into the New World had been eradicated, maybe I could separate myself entirely from what is in the past. It isn't.

And I find myself really intrigued by African-American culture, and yet I think to participate in the culture would make me the target for scorn, suspicion, and hosility. I don't think I'm allowed to have opinions about that culture. I grant you, my exposure is on the sidelines - I'm addicted to watching "Girlfriends", I'm listening to Kanye West, I think Taye Diggs is hot. (Well, he is.)

I guess really every individual is different, and the truth is I'd like to know a few who are very different from me. But human nature being what it is, befriending the different remains a threat for both sides.

Peace out, brutha.