Spotify Girl

You would think I crawled out of a hole. Prior to this month, I could no more get a song to play on my cell phone than I could engineer cheese. Or work the “smart” TV in our living room. All completely beyond me. Let’s face it, the last time I made a “playlist” Air Supply was #1 on the charts and I was a teenager plucking faves off the radio onto a cassette tape. “Mix tape” is not some trendy Hamilton pass-around. It’s the thing still occupying a desk drawer in my sun room—by the dozen. Yes, rn. I kid you not, along with the device(s) on which to play them. Blue tooth my patootie. Here at the Burk Emporium we have a cassette deck, a couple tape recorders, and a bona fide early prototype Walkman. For real. There’s no throwing required for a “throw back,” we’re all still there! How else you gonna play your Meatloaf “Bat Outta Hell” album? Or—hello!—your Eagles Hotel California. Those are Bill’s. I got creative with mine: “Songs for Trains.” “Songs for Walking”…”For Night”…”Songs for the Rain.” (How lucky am I to be young enough to have seen Enya happen along). And yes, my children, this all from hours sitting in your bedroom waiting for your favorite song to come on the radio so you could hit “record” and then pray your mom didn’t bang on your door for dinner. Downloading is so overrated. Wasn’t I THE BOMB when I saved babysitting money to invest in a 1980 Panasonic Technics SL-1200G turntable and proudly enrolled myself in the Columbia House Record Club? Remember it? Your first twelve albums for a penny! My first album ever? J Geils Band Freezeframe.

Fast forward 40 un-seeable years. Will, my technical assistant, is happy to set me up with a “Spotify duo” plan. Gets it all loaded onto my laptop, my cell phone, sets the password, keys in my CC. What a little helper, that one. “Free trial, Mom! Don’t worry, I’ll remind you.” So. Here we are, 31 days later, with a premium account on my turtleneck/where’s the actual button on this %$#@! thing brain. I told him I would pay his half any time he helps me. Without harumph-ing and eye rolling and making me feel like an imbecile. He likes that I like his music. Because of taking band at school and the boundary-less existence life (and the internet and social media) has proffered my child, his tastes are eclectic. Hans Zimmer along with Elton John and the Four Seasons. Billy Joel. One cute side note: apparently he loves the theme trailer music for CNN-10 and has it downloaded half a dozen times on—(what??) (where?)—some ephemeral nonexistent device called The Clash. No, The Clap. Oh wait, THE CLOUD. Must be the same vacuous black hole where the photos I take disappear to. “Share”? What a lie. Can’t print or email them to anyone but they will exist in useless perpetuity because they’re in (drum roll, please) The Cloooouuud. I’m just sayin’ millennials, you pay homage to a ridiculous god. Much better system, mine, circa 1982: I thought the theme song to Masterpiece Theater was pretty cool, so my dad handed me a brand new shrink-wrapped Memorex and helped me load—er, tape—that puppy onto it over and over again, long enough to get around the block on my no-speed bike or walk home from a babysitting job. (Who needs Shuffle?) Not only that, I can still put my hands on this masterpiece today. Test. Of. Time.

Sophie wants in on our new membership, and her ticket is two of her existing playlists. She knows I love her music. For the longest time, the playlist has been one of the more pleasant perks of being around this girl. Like the scent of a lingering perfume, her Bluetooth music kicks in like magic anytime she and her long- legged frame slip into my car; songs I never knew about play in luscious refrain one right after the other and stay after she’s gone. Ahhhhhh. It’s like sinking into a musical bath. Come to find out, songs filled with wondering, wandering teenage angst and hunger for elsewhere still exist—rolling, repeating backgrounds with plucked acoustic strings and raspy, haunting vocals—why, she’s got a whole assortment, one right after the other. Turn on her music and you feel like getting in the car to drive. To Canada. Tonight. Coming home, her bedroom is on the front of the house, right above where I park the car in our driveway. As you pull in slowly, if she’s home she’ll be up there, and if she’s up there then the Bluetooth minions in my car speak with the music minions in her phone and my speakers will suddenly come to life, exuding the sweet sounds of whatever she is listening to. Last year and the year before when various worlds were falling apart, that simple act of pulling into my parking space held deeper meaning for me: like I had finally arrived in the perfect spot. Reception. If I park right here and she is up there, in her bedroom, perched on the little life raft of a bed sailing the senior year pandemic sea—then the strains of Mumford & Sons are strong and sure. Stand still. Don’t move, or it will all be lost! That’s right: Freeze frame.

So what’s my playlist of choice? Well, here is the point of this post because I’ve been listening to it ever since Will got me all Spotified: Best Inspirational Epic Movie Soundtracks. Where has this been all my life? Not only have a I crawled out of a technological cave and emerged from a global pandemic, I have been transported through music into to realm of the epic. Just as the name says, this playlist is the “biggest,” boldest, most inspiring soundtrack-style music out there: Hans Zimmer’s “Time” from the movie Inception or the theme song from Pirates of the Caribbean. The songs on this playlist all have stirring titles: “The Journey begins,” “Surrender to Hope,” “Strength of a Thousand Men,” “Free Into Eternity.” To the thunderous drums and majestic horns overlayed with sweet strains of the violins I go about my day, where everything takes on a greater magnitude. Folding laundry, unloading groceries, driving over to school to pick up carpool, I am not just happy, I am victorious, I am not just finished with something on my endless list of the trivial, I am triumphant. With the best Inspirational Epic Movie Soundtrack of All Time, your life takes on a heightened aura, where every mundane ridiculous act is raised to the heroic because the London Philharmonic Orchestra clearly thinks so as it pours out its heart through your ear buds. Do you hear it? Some days driving up 301, speakers blaring, I half expect to see the cavalry bearing down on me in the rearview mirror or the entire opposing army spread out just there on the horizon. When I don my badge to walk into the high school for a day of subbing, I get the strongest urge to free the captives or lead the insurrection. I am listening to “Les Chevaliers de Sangreal” from the Davinci Code while driving out to UVA, where the mountains fall away and you think I’d walked through fire and conquered the barbarians to get to her.

Often times the music I love is from movies I would not: sci-fi stuff and war films. No rom-com or “feel good” for me; my favorite movie genre is epic pseudo-historical sagas usually involving great shedding of blood. Thing is. Life takes on a more momentous, epic feel when you have the Vienna Philharmonic performing in the background. Some see their lives as a story. Writing chapters. Some identify with the metaphor of a journey, clocking miles and making way stops. In my melodramatic little brain, I have always seen life as a battle, hence my favorite movies invariably involve a broad axe. Now that is a weapon that makes a mess. Gladiator. Braveheart. The Last of the Mohicans. The Patriot. Where not only justice but humanity wins out over all and above all odds. I’ve always been an ethos girl. Life is not for the fastest, the surest, the smartest. Good thing. The richest. Gooder thing. Not for the prettiest or most put together (thank God), but for the truly kind. And today, to be kind is an act of bravery in an ongoing battle to sell out. How’s that for melodrama w/ your coffee?

So when Spotify Mom hops in her teleporter in the Land Suddenly Without Gas to retrieve her First Year hero from the battle grounds of UVA, I have to say the music helps underwrite my epic. This is not a just a college move-out so much as a once-in-a-lifetime homecoming, a Return of the King, a Welcome of the Prodigal accompanied by the most stirring music. The drums beat behind a wash of symphonic crescendos and the cymbals clash. (Wait, we’re having leftovers tonight?! Where’s the fatted calf??) The horn section goes wild. In the last week of class, Ellie texts me a little after midnight that she has just submitted the 17-page paper weighing on her all week. The sigh heard round the world. “My junior year is OVER!” she crows. See? My hero. Cue the music. For her, “Heart of Courage” from the movie Invincible or “Now we are Free” from the final scenes of Gladiator. Do you know these songs? Huge sounds and haunting vocals that make you catch a glimpse of your life as a sweeping panorama instead of the frozen fish pouts that now comprise the Facebook and “‘Gram” posts we absently scroll through. Dead before they began. No sense of the continuity of life in those. Never mind beauty. But my continuously-playing Greatest Inspiration Epic Movie Soundtracks playlist keeps my perspective in line: THIS is not just a day, it’s an event, not a moment but an occasion, and all of life’s breadth and depth is present in every note. My girl has beat back three semesters of online learning, much of it asynchronous, holed up in a little room on the 3rd floor of a campus apartment—and she is emerging victorious. Not just surviving, but thriving and strapping in for more next year. For her? “The Longest Ride” from Pirates of the Caribbean.

I should think she is damaged from asynchronous learning, life out of time. Like a sick day that lasts 18 months, where you don’t have to get dressed or answer the door or eat cooked food at specific times or really finish anything for the day or complete a thought, for that matter, because no class is actually happening and no professor is running anything, they are just posting fresh piles of work each Monday for you to complete. How is it she managed to pack up and get home again, all the while babbling about classes she’s already registered for and excited to take next year and showing me how possible it will be, once they open international travel, to study abroad next year…How is it even possible she still imagines, still dreams—I love this girl. For her homecoming I select “Terres Interdites” from The Lion King director’s cut edition, the exultant strains of a tune that stretches across all time. Last year on this very day, now that I think about it, she was doubled over in pain, admitting herself to the ER at midnight and then laying on a gurney through the all-alone night while I slept in the hospital parking lot. When somewhere toward dawn (See?? Not just “5 am” but “somewhere toward an ambivalent and misty dawn”) when her appendix began to leak (okay, “woke her without warming as it began its fateful rupture”) and they hurried up the surgery, she texted me: “Is okay Mumma. You can go home now.” This music, as I quietly let myself in the back door just as the sun was coming up to begin a school day for the other two, would have been one of fear and utter defeat. I just dropped off my daughter at the place people were dying of Covid by the day and left her to go under the knife alone. Cue the haunting choral interlude.

But wait—wrong bird. It’s not a swan (song) it’s a phoenix. Talk about rising from the ashes. Sophie’s theme song was actually writ into her college essay (I know because I was there) the “Toreador Song.” Submitted before the pandemic, when that cliché of “overcoming odds” was just a child’s prompt, her essay seized on this music metaphor of a life well played. “El Toreador” is a very complicated stringed orchestra piece from Carmen. Perhaps in the musical world it is NBD but in middle school it was the Everest to be climbed (that metaphor’s in there, too; I suggested it). She told the UVA admissions readers all about her struggle in strings class, about tapping out the bow strokes with her pencil and carrying the score around with her 24/7, working (and worrying) until she had it mastered. She would not let it beat her. Why not, then—a little epic soundtrack for her as well? Perhaps “Strength of a Thousand Men” from Bergersen or, from the same composer, “Heart of Courage.” I guess loading up on the resilient ones in 2019 was a really good call, there, UVA.

When I pick her up from school this past week, she is glowing with—what? Relief. Happiness. To be honest, I think she is coming into her name: wisdom. She looks lighter than air, and walks tall. Twice quarantined, academically overrun, decision-hounded and life weary, she has not backed down, she has not surrendered. Got up at 4 am twice this past semester to travel to state lines for her Covid vaccine (Yes, I know they were giving them away at the local Walgreens but people. How heroic is that??) They’re dead right about the first year of college: you take one kid and a year later go back to pick up a different one. Recently nominated as “house mom” to 14 young women all going to occupy a six-bedroom house with two bathrooms next semester, she was responsible for collecting and submitting rent to a brand-new landlord who reports to a brand new leasing company, so between the three parties not a lot of playbook going down, if you know what I mean. Sophie at her wits’ end. Sorry you have three exams tomorrow, a lab and a paper due, they’re going to want, yes, a paper check for $15K in Austin Texas by 4 pm next Tuesday. (Who operates with a paper check in the US Mail anymore? You shoulda heard me trying to explain that one to her. “What?! So it’s just a little piece of paper and you have to pay to get them? That stupid!”) Well said, my girl. Apparently her wits are a little longer than I thought. Three days and a half-dozen face time calls later and she texts me from a university scooter on her way from the bank with a cashier’s check in hand for the entire amount headed to the post. Sophie. I had said. Sophie. Forget technology. Go on your feet. Go to the bank you can walk to. Open the door and walk in and ask to open an account. Tell the people there what you are trying to do. They will help you. Ah, my daughter, in the land before Google, the people of the land were your best bet. No phonecallfacetimelivechatsnapshitdo you have the app crap. A long looong time ago, my girl, the world was made of solutions and it was for the faithful and the observant and the brave to find them. And the simplest ones were the best. And so she did. My adulting champion.

We are listening to her playlist on the way home. The one I told you about, filled with earthy, folksy tunes that make you want to drive forever or disappear into the mountains for a spell with nothing but the clothes on your back. Speaking of which…That’s when she lets me in on her little big secret. Apparently this is a UVA “thing,” a rite of passage and a test of loyalty rolled into one involving clothes. Or lack thereof. . . and yes, TMI police, I have permission to share. Actually, I think the old girl is secretly very proud of herself. At approximately 2 am one fine spring “evening” last week, on a more specific date which we will not disclose to the college administrators, my beautiful, obedient and sometimes shy daughter removed every article of clothing and ran streaking across “the lawn” of her alma mater. Screaming her fool head off into the night. She tells me that she and her partners in crime were preceded by LOTS of other groups of nude, running pseudo-adults. Like, what, there was a line?? She assures me this fact as if it’s going to make me feel any better. A kids’ ultimate “everybody’s doing it, mom.” Okaaaaay… I guess. What I find so amazing in her recounting of this insane act is the realization that Sophie and her little cache of girlfriends surely would have been the only ones to do it sober.

I’ve been thinking about her crazy stunt a lot since she told me about it. My remix, of course, involves the symbolic shedding of clothing as a stripping away of all that the pandemic layered on them and their generation—crushing disappointment, fear, worry and then a way of doing and being that was one lonely restriction after the next. I have to admit for musical accompaniment I am stumped on this one. What music shall we select for her? “The Stampede/I’m Coming Home” from Water for Elephants, or perhaps a more triumphant “Across the Stars” from Star Wars which is, ultimately, a love song. And isn’t all true bravery exactly that? The will to love. Her working out her way into that school year, her place in a social circle, a niche, not to mention academic success and now this new leadership role in the group house she scored for herself next year has been nothing short of heroic, culminating in that scooter ride with $15,000 in her pocket. Many students, I think, find their joy in simply turning in papers and returning library books, but this year somehow demanded something more, well, momentous. Apparently. And so, crazy insane unclothed run (I’m told it is quite a distance) makes sense as long as you have a good sense of the epic. You go, my girl, you run your gauntlet, and I shall play the music. El Toreador is all but deafening in the cool spring air as you run screaming across that campus—er, grounds, claiming it as your own. My girl. She will return, she will survive. She will prevail. Or, in the words of the Psalm I illuminated for her last summer [now slightly ironic]: “She is clothed with strength and dignity; she will laugh at the days to come. ” Proverbs 31:25.

I’m still driving so I can’t see her face while she is talking, probably why she’s telling me in the car. I’m smiling, but I’m shaking my head in disbelief and have officially deemed the act “wild and crazy.” “Really mom?” says she. “Really? Because when I thought about it, I thought surely you would have done it—you know, back in the day.” Huh. How bout that. Well…maybe with the right soundtrack I would have.