My friend Way doesn’t like music. It’s not just that he doesn’t like my music (I’m used to that), or that he doesn’t like “those crazy kids’ music” ( that too), but he doesn’t like any music at all. I know, because in the course of our friendship I have played him nearly every one of the CD’s in my very eclectic CD collection–everything from Desi Arnez to the Butthole Surfers–and, while some of my CD’s have managed to somewhat moderate the pained expression his face assumes every time I hit the “play” button, as long as music of some form is still playing, the look is still there.
In fact, noticing the frequency with which the look appeared was one of the things that made me realize how often it is that I surround myself with music; unfortunately, the other thing that made me realize this was when Clementine started to sing along from the back seat.
To fully comprehend how problematic this is for me you have to understand what kind of music I play when I am in my car; while I am sure that for some people a collection of Beethoven’s sonatas are the perfect accompaniment to a long drive, for me the only thing a driving tape needs to be is fast, and loud. When Clementine was a baby this was not a problem, since the car, to her, was like a giant martini on wheels: a couple of laps around the block and she was out like a light, leaving me free to listen to everything from late ‘70’s punk to an unabridged reading of the Kama Sutra. Now, however, she is nine years old, and has begun to show what seems to me to be a much too keen interest in the songs I am playing, as well as a much too able memory. This was brought home to me only too well when, after only briefly listening to a funky hip-hop style dance mix a friend of mine had brought back for me from Columbia, Clementine turned to me and asked, “Mom, what does ‘don’t need no short-dicked man’ mean?”
I got out of that one by explaining that I didn’t speak Spanish. But the whole incident made me feel as if I had been put on notice: suddenly I realized that nearly every tape I owned had something questionable in it, whether it was the Violent Femmes singing “why can’t I get just one f**k” or Mudhoney singing “touch me I’m sick”. Even a group as innocuous as the Dixie Chicks still sing about murder and adultery.
So what am I to do? I guess I could always listen to the radio, but there are two problems with this: the first is that the caged squirrels that power my car don’t always get around to sending power over to the radio; and the second is that the only station I can stand, The Eagle, (while helpfully obscuring the naughty words; sometimes to the point where a song by a group such as Nine Inch Nails becomes almost unintelligible) has the distressing habit of playing that annoying Flagstaff Insurance jingle, a tune which always makes me want to climb to the top of the nearest tower and start shooting people.
This leaves me with only one hope: that whatever virus or mishap caused Way to dislike music will somehow afflict Clementine, leaving her so disgusted at the mere thought of music that she puts her hands over her ears and hums whenever we get into the car. It could happen: because he is also color-blind, I am thinking that perhaps he was dropped on his head as a child; this means that all I have to do is surreptitiously search his head for the exact location of the flat spot, and then–well, let’s just say I’m only one playground “accident” away from musical freedom.