Songs That Sometimes Make Me Cry.

When I was an angst-ridden teen, before the cancer and all that, I used to listen to songs that I knew would make me cry, and have a good solid bawl. Sort of like the restaurant in The Tin Drum by Günter Grass. All the former Hitler Youth had onions cut at their tables right under their noses so that they could cry. A torture and a therapy at the same time.

I had plenty to cry about. Normal didn't exist in my family (not sure it exists anywhere), and I learned early that extreme emotional pain cannot be endured everyday if you melt everytime it occurs. I guess I was stocking up. In the years between those days and these days, lots of horrible things have happened to me. The lowest points follow:

*I was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 17.
*An abusive man I lived with for 5 years threatened my life and stalked me for 2 years after I left him.
*My mother, my best friend, died while I was living in Paris, a week before I was to come home.

Lots of things pile up, and you have to harden to get through the day, the month, the year. It took me two years to emote "properly" about my mother's death. And you know who helped me the most besides my fiancé? E of Eels and the fabulous "Blinking Lights and Other Revelations." The song that never fails is "Last Time We Spoke." The first time I heard it, I was buying art supplies at the BHV in central Paris. I had just left the building and was standing on the corner about to walk home. But I couldn't move. Bobby, Jr.'s howl stopped me. But the line "nothing hurts/like someone who knows/everything about you/leaving you behind" almost killed me. Even now, that line squeezes my heart. It is so simple, but so complex. Just like grief. There's self-pity, it's acknowledged, and oddly, respected. And, for me, it is exactly what it feels like to have lost my mom. It is the worst pain I have ever experienced. Nothing hurts like it. Something happens, I have a bad day, I don't want to have to explain, but the one person who understood me completely is gone. Very singular and stabbing pain.

I sent my dad "Blinking Lights" for Christmas after another of his (this time successful?) stints in rehab. It speaks to him, too. But I think that those songs speak in a different language to anyone who hears them. They are specifically unspecific. They are perfect songs.

Of course, there's also "It's a Motherfucker" from Daisies of the Galaxy. That whole damn song. Simple, but really not at all.

The other song that sucker-punched me recently was "Imagine a Man" by The Who from Who By Numbers. I was having a Who night, just me and my iPod. I have listened to this song a million times, but that evening, I don't know. The music, the lyrics, the production quality, and something in that liquidy bass line that starts after "or a simple act of deceit" - especially that bass line weaving into eveything else - grabbed my heart and squished it. It's a response, a support, a voice of a loved one. A friend with open arms ready to hold you until you've stopped crying. Empathy translated into music. May have been the furthest thing from John's mind, but that's what it felt like in that moment, at that listening. The magical production quality of that beautiful song lifts it even higher. The image that comes to me is something shining in a blue sky full of fluffy clouds. Is it a UFO? An Angel? You think you know and then it's gone. Like trying to describe a moment of union with the divine. That song makes me cry because it's so damn beautiful.