MUSIC THERAPY

I’ve been listening to music more than usual since the breakup. Once upon a time, the TV or stereo always seemed to be on, but I haven’t had a television since my as-yet-to-be-wall-mounted flatscreen flopped and smashed on the floor after an apparent wind gust from the balcony and music hasn’t been the same since I could play an album or CD on the stereo. (How much did the last part of the preceding sentence date me?) 

 

Somewhere along my life’s journey, perhaps linked to my first stint in a psych ward, I came to love the quiet. It calms me. It keeps me focused on writing, reading and thoughts that swirl during the in-betweens. Creative ideas, little snippets that may come off as random, provide personal entertainment.

 

I’m not in the mood for quiet right now. Swirly thoughts aren’t so entertaining. I need noise. I have to distract the mind.

 

Welcome back, steady music stream. It’s not just distraction. The songs I play offer a slow release of the confusion, the hurt and the WTF that still simmers under the surface. After other failed relationships, I’d been in the mood for strong, proud diva songs that mask a lost love’s sting with bravado, the basic message: Stupid man, you made a huge mistake but you’ll never have a shot with me again. Annotated playlist:

·      “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” – Taylor Swift

·      “Someday” – Mariah Carey

·      “I Will Survive” – Gloria Gaynor (of course!)

·      “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)” – En Vogue

·      “Irreplaceable” – Beyoncé

·      “So What” – Pink

 

Good stuff. Better than scream therapy or walking into a glassworks studio with a baseball bat. (Less expensive, at the very least.)

 

But that’s not where I’m at. I don’t feel hate or bitterness. That might make things easier. (Ariana Grande even has a brand new song exactly on point!) Given how lousy the circumstances of the breakup were, I should have no problem concocting some animosity to put whatever we had through a shredder, but I’m not there. Any anger that does seep in arises from the sense he rejected me in the end by diminishing how much I invested and how much I supported. He gave up on us.

 

Cue the first song on heavy rotation on my Breakup Soundtrack (2024): “Don’t Give Up On Us” by David Soul (RIP). Sorry, David. I can sing it, but the dude ain’t listening. He already did. Still, the song helps. David’s voice is so gentle. The song has that classic ’70s air of hope and happiness. How could his lover say no?

 

It’s a nice little dream, a recurring one. And I don’t have an in-person therapist Googling song blockers. My condo walls are thick enough that my neighbors haven’t knocked on the door, saying, “Please stop. Play that Rebecca Black “Friday” song or even “Macarena,” but no more Starsky. Or Hutch…Whichever.” (He was Kenneth Hutch, FYI.) 

 

Okay, I can get more real. Given up on. Whatcha gonna play now, Mr. DJ?

 

For several consecutive nights, I went to sleep with “You abandoned me, Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” playing in my head. Rose Royce version, though Madonna’s remake is almost as good. Never even had to stream the tune. I’d awaken, not to songbirds or seagulls or even the clunking trains on the tracks a hundred feet from my loft, but to Sheena Easton’s “You Could Have Been with Me.” New day, same state of mind. 

 

The practicalities of being “Alone Again (Naturally)” get acknowledged in Michael Johnson’s “Bluer than Blue” (“After you go, I can catch up on my reading. After you go, I’ll have a lot more room in my closet.”) and a throwaway line of Hall & Oates’ “She’s Gone” (“one less toothbrush hanging in the stand”). The songs remind me I’m not special. This happens to other people, too. Even if it was my ex who fixated on closet space.

 

The standouts on my present playlist include: Natalie Cole’s “Someone that I Used to Love,” a song that relentlessly sabotages any normal brain activity multiple times every single day (“Wish it was enough for you, All the love I had to give”); Dido’s “White Flag” as a point of pride, knowing that I’d given everything and hadn’t shied away from the possibility (and reality) of further rejection and humiliation, “going down with the ship” by conveying I still wanted to find our way back to us; and Calum Scott’s “You Are the Reason” which seems to spin in place, just like me, deemed irrelevant yet still wanting more.

 

Other songs in my discards pile:

·      “Dancing on My Own” – Robyn or Calum Scott; why not mix it up a little?

·      “Say Something” – A Great Big World and Christina Aguilera (crushing…)

·      “Knowing Me, Knowing You” – ABBA(!)

·      “(Our Love) Don’t Throw It All Away” – Andy Gibb

·      “After the Love Has Gone” – Earth, Wind & Fire, a song from my early teens which I loved but, when it came on the radio a couple of weeks ago, I realized, damn, it’s a breakup song

·      “Evergreen” – Omar Apollo

·      “Someone You Loved” – Lewis Capaldi

·      “Manhattan” – Sara Bareilles (always, always, always)

·      “Walk on By” – Dionne Warwick

·      “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine” – Lou Rawls (okay, more than a tad diva-ish)

·      “It’s Too Late” – Carole King (a freakin’ classic, now nudging me too hard)

·      “She’s Out of My Life” – Michael Jackson, if only for the voice-cracking ending, but I’m able to move on; what did MJ ever know about love?

·      “No More I Love You's” – Annie Lennox, adding a welcome Annie quirk

·      “Rocket 2 U” – The Jets (not a breakup song but it was already on my jogging playlist and it playfully dismisses some of my ex’s reasoning for the breakup; teen-beat therapy)

 

That’s an abridged list. I needn’t reveal how extensive the list is. I do love pop music. And therein lies a silver lining. I’m not wallowing all day. This post just makes it seem that way. The thing about listening to songs on YouTube—which my ex found maddening—is I control and constantly change the playlist, sometimes clicking on a suggestion, often letting my own ideas intercede. I can follow my umpteenth listen of “Someone that I Used to Love” with Natalie Cole’s exuberant “This Will Be,” lyrically no longer relatable but oh so bop-worthy. I still play Whitney Houston’s version of “I’m Every Woman,” typically when I shave which continues to amuse me. And, weirdly, I’m giving Percy Faith’s “Theme from A Summer Place” repeated listens. My therapy doesn’t have to be embedded in sanity.  

 

For humor in a breakup, I always rely on Dionne Warwick’s “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.” Thank you, Hal David, for lyrics to help me smile through humiliation:

What do you get when you fall in love?

A guy with a pin to burst your bubble.

That’s what you get for all your trouble;

I’ll never fall in love again.

 

What do you get when you kiss a guy?

You get enough germs to catch pneumonia.

After you do, he’ll never phone you;

I’ll never fall in love again.

 

What do you get when you fall in love?

You only get lies and pain and sorrow,

So for at least until tomorrow,

I’ll never fall in love again.

 

Bless you, Hal David! (And RIP to you as well.)

 

The first tears finally came on Day 26. I’d stumbled upon a suggested song by exes Katy Perry and John Mayer and my mind went to Mayer’s “Dreaming with a Broken Heart,” a song I loved for a while—objectively pretty and sad but nothing I’d personally connected with during a prolonged period of singlehood. As the song played, the lyrics opened with, “When you’re dreaming with a broken heart, the waking up is the hardest part.” That was it. I knew exactly what he was talking about. Eyes watered, cheeks caught the overflow. Suddenly, survival became acute. Not about getting through a breakup; just let me make it through the song. 

 

I did, thanks in part to a lyrical tangent about roses. I could connect but it would take a bit of work and, hell, I wouldn’t go there. Close the floodgates. Disaster averted.

 

The closest I’ve gotten to a music-enhanced release and a glimpse I will move on is the song “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus. I’ve been doing the Miley, buying myself flowers. It’s a bit of a hollow gesture. He wasn’t the flower buyer, I was. I loved showing up at his place each time with something fresh-cut; not roses but some stems that had an architectural quality to them or fit his color scheme. I was buying my own gerberas pre-relationship and throughout our two years. I’ll continue to do so. Not quite redemptive when it’s the status quo. I suppose I could dance around my condo in my underwear like Miley does in the video but that would only underscore how I’m not at all like Miley, after all. Grab a shirt. STAT!

 

For now, my song list still feels fresh. I’m a long ways from Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” but then I never want to return to that delusional reincarnation of “If You’re Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands.” As The Beatles say, it’s a long and winding road. I ride on, two hands on the wheel for now, trying to glimpse a little less in the rear-view mirror. Radio on, of course.

 

THE PASSING OF DAVID

First off, I should note that the titular David is not dead. Sorry if that’s the whole reason you clicked the link to this post. If you feel duped, let me make it up to you by offering further reading on actually dead Davids: an early heartthrob from my childhood, David Cassidy, and a lyricist who helped pen the soundtrack of my youth, Hal David. As a bonus, I’ve dug up a Google Image of Michelangelo’s statue of David. Sure beats a traditional olive branch, don’t you think?

 

Okay, let me get to the living David who is actually the subject of this post. I met him in February 2020. He was the hookup who wasn’t. It’s not that I showed up at his place, he glanced at me up and down and then slammed the door, bolting the chain and sliding a heavy piece of furniture across the floor while saying through the soon-to-be blockaded door, “Go away! Consider yourself blocked.” Plausible, sure, but that’s not how our hookup came to NOT be. David had the sense to suggest we meet in public at a café somewhere between my place and his. Technically, it was closer to his place, but things were ambiguous enough that I had to spend an hour making the bed, dusting and shoving “keepsakes” I should have thrown away years ago in the hall closet. 

 

The story of David and me made the pages of The New York Times. Again, not a murder story. He’s alive, I swear. One of my most satisfying writing feats was getting the newspaper to publish my Modern Love essay. You can read it here if you haven’t already reached your monthly limit of free articles (Is it one article or is it down to zero?), but I’ll condense things for you. We met, we chatted, we got kicked out when the place closed and then we said goodbye on the sidewalk. No hookup. Instead, he made reservations at a trendy Thai spot the next weekend. 

 

The failed hookup turned into default dating. I’d already planned to leave Vancouver in two months and no guy was going to keep me in the place where my social life had long been stagnant. David would be a pleasant distraction between packing boxes and turfing so many of those keepsakes. 

 

Most of my dating experiences that last more than a single meeting involve red flag spotting. There was the guy still shared a bed with his ex. And the one who was getting a divorce from his wife and had never dated men. There was also a guy who mentioned having nasal reconstruction surgery to repair damages from a past addiction to cocaine. All true scenarios. They say the cream rises to the top but, in my dating history, it’s been scum that comes to the surface. 

 

David’s red flags weren’t as alarming. There were no flagrant fouls but there were obvious signs we weren’t a match. I saw them and shrugged. This wasn’t long-term. We were just hanging out.

 

Then the world shut down. My move was off. David and I continued on. He became my COVID bubble. The Modern Love article ended with hope, our bubble intact. I wrote it several months before it was published. By then, we’d broken up. Our differences hadn’t set off alarms, but they were such that I knew I would never fall in love. Five months was a good run.

 

We’d be friends.

 

That’s what people say. Occasionally, it comes to be. 

 

The first couple of times we met, post breakup, we went for a walk or played tennis. It was friendly-ish. The chitchat was stilted, but it always was. One of David’s quirks was that the first ten minutes of conversation was a monologue of everything he’d been doing, every meal he’d eaten, every friend he’d seen. In the past, I’d tried interrupting with a question or by injecting an anecdote related to what he was saying, but he’d bat away my commentary and proceed undeterred with his spiel. It had to come out all at once. I often wondered if he’d even notice if I put on earbuds or stepped away for a minute…or seven. It wasn’t that he cared solely about himself. He'd always get around to asking about me and truly listening. I’d accepted the quirk, but then I’d grown tired of it. I wanted back-and-forth banter, not soliloquy exchanges.

 

In the friend zone, David would try to stretch our time, suggesting dinner. I sensed dinner would muddle his understanding of The New Us. Indeed, he kissed me on the lips the first time I dropped him off after tennis. Another time, while walking, he talked about getting back together. Maybe we couldn’t be friends. Maybe a stab at friendship caused deeper wounds than just walking away.

 

For his birthday, I bought him a coffee. Anything more might have been misread. For mine, I passed on a suggested pizza night. “I’m not big on my birthday,” I said. It was the absolute truth.

 

A chronic wrist injury flared up in David’s right hand so tennis was no longer an option. Our times whittled down to walks. COVID surges had a way of putting more time in between each outing as David was especially fretful about any possible exposure. I found I wasn’t putting any effort into making contact. Eventually, there was nothing more than an occasional Facebook message from him, so rare that I was afraid to click on them. I presumed someone had hijacked his account. When I did click, the message would be a random GIF. “Did you send this?” I asked the first time it happened. Indeed, he had. His explanation didn’t do much in terms of explaining anything. Why would he send it? What did it say about how little he knew of me?

 

I let the next GIF go. I spent a minute trying to think of a reply, but nothing came to mind. A thumbs up or a smiley face felt like too much, like a forced laugh upon hearing an old knock-knock joke, the one about bananas and a late-on-the-scene orange. Wouldn’t a meh emoji be insulting?

 

It’s been at least a year, maybe eighteen months. I’ve moved on. So has he. There’s no animosity, at least on my part. (Maybe he really wanted a smiley emoji.) In some ways, it boggles my mind. I dated David five months. We supported each other in the strangest of times. As with so many things from those COVID days, that relationship is behind us, nothing to revisit.  

 

A friendship was not to be. We were too different to be partners. The friendship felt forced. Sometimes you just have to allow one another to move on. Circumstances change, connections fade. While we now live in a world that makes it easy to keep tabs on almost anyone, sometimes the need isn’t there.  

 

  

MY FIRST CRUSH SONG

Most of the first pop songs I recall had a novelty to them (“Puff the Magic Dragon”; “My Ding-A-Ling”) or were favorites for primary teacher productions (“If I Had a Hammer”; “Scarborough Fair”; “He Ain’t Heavy...He’s My Brother”).

But there was one album mixed in with my dad’s massive classical collection that I begged my parents to play over and over. (They didn’t trust that I’d place the record needle carefully on the vinyl. Seems I’d already built a reputation for being a klutz.) I longed to hear The Carpenters’ “Close to You”. I found the entire album enchanting and, to this day, no other voice touches my heart as profoundly as Karen Carpenter’s.

Songs like “Maybe It’s You” and “We’ve Only Just Begun” introduced me to how adults perceive love. I’d stare at the album and imagine marrying Karen. But even then I felt confused, especially when listening to “(They Long to Be) Close to You”. It was my first awareness of gender in a song.  As I belted out the lyrics over and over again at home, I tried to envision this gorgeous, magnetic man, the one who attracted girls and birds, the one who made stars fall from the sky, the one with “moon dust in your hair of gold and starlight in your eyes of blue.” I knew that this was the ideal man.

While singing, I blissfully kept the male focus, likely causing my parents to have hushed talks in the bedroom.  “Maybe we should buy him a Jimi Hendrix album.” Actually, they were never that hip. “Perhaps something by Perry Como.” It wouldn’t have mattered. For the next two decades, I took extra glimpses at blond-haired, blue-eyed men, sent by angels. Hal David and Burt Bacharach said so and the lovely Karen sang it. I crushed on an image that I occasionally saw on the screen, but that never came to fruition in life. Indeed, there was nothing angelic or golden about the blond blues in my life—certainly not in booger-eating Sean Millar or chewing tobacco-spitting Kelvin Bates.

No regrets though. It was a lovely fantasy. While girls dreamed of princes and living in castles, I fancied the quintessential Golden Boy, the male version of Snow White with birds aflutter around him in a forest. Maybe that explains my early affinity for hiking, too. Karen had that kind of influence on me.