The number one song in the country at the moment of my birth, just finishing up a six-week run at the position, was Bridge Over Troubled Water. Sort of. That week, officially on the Saturday after I was born, the number one song became Let It Be. I find that two-song playlist oddly appropriate to my next 50+ years.
I started listening to Simon and Garfunkel on Spotify and it reminded me of my life in the ’80s and ’90s. I can’t count how many times I criss-crossed the country. “ʻKathy, I’m lost,’ I said, though I knew she was sleeping. ʻI’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.’” But I did know why. And I do know why.
It’s a cliché to repeat how songs invoke memories. I can’t listen to Band of Horses without seeing J flit back and forth across the bathroom, momentarily visible in panties and my t-shirt, then disappearing from view. I can’t hear the Hold Steady without remembering looking at the back of my hand staring drunkenly at the veins and noticing how empty my hand seemed. “Sometimes she thinks she sees these things, right before theyʻre happening” was the repeated soundtrack driving under the influence to work, simultaneously struggling through my divorce. And I can’t play Simon and Garfunkel without also hearing the clacking of train tracks or the groaning of diesel-engined Greyhounds riding across the plains in the middle of the night, stopping in cities so small there was only a snack machine in the depot to get a bite, and crossroads with a flashing yellow light in lieu of one that changed from red to yellow to green.
I was on Trip Advisor the other day and I got bored of clicking when I had hit 500 cities, towns, and hamlets in America, Canada, and Mexico. Johnny Cash sang “I’ve been everywhere” and between two precise latitudes, it seems so have I. “We’ve all gone to look for America.” And so we have. What did we find? What did I find? You?