Waxing Rhapsodic

For several days now, Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” has been a constant refrain playing through my head. In hopes of ridding myself of this earworm–even though it’s a good one–here’s one of my few posts that actually reveals personal information about my past. I’m sure I’ll only leave it up for a day or two before I become horrified and make it private and inaccessible.

One thing about Tom and me having no kids… There’s no captive audience for our longass boring stories. And you are free, too–you can save yourself by not reading:

My brother and sister were eight and five years older than me, so they had all the good music. But I was only allowed to listen to their rock and roll when they were present. And since, crazy as it seems, they preferred their friends and lives to hanging out with an annoying little sister, that would have left me music-free except for my parents’ albums.

The music shrine took up most of a living room wall. You remember, right? It looked something like this, but in our house, even longer.

It wasn’t just the source of music; it was a piece of bad furniture. On one end was an amber vase, and on the other was an amber candy dish. If the candy dish held anything, it would be individually-wrapped hard candy that only an ancient uncle or the preacher’s kids would eat.

Eventually, one or the other of these things would get knocked off as albums were dragged out. Like the time Riley broke off the top of the amber vase and I told my mother that I did it so she wouldn’t hate him. But those years came later, when my own friends brought over their great music, thereby thwarting the Evil Selfishness of my siblings.

Most of my parents’ albums were to be avoided at all costs. Like the ones that made them get all misty-eyed and inclined to talk about “during the war” or provoke them to push the coffee table aside and demonstrate their great jitterbugging skill. (Actually, they were good dancers, a trait I didn’t inherit.)

I usually avoided any of those albums that had a big year printed on the cover (Hits of 1942! 1943! 1944!), and those albums in the plain green covers with gold lettering (Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and their ilk), and searched for anything that wasn’t The Sound of Music. (I knew every word and can still see Julie’s photo on the back cover–I erasered over her teeth at some point when I was doodling, so her smile was even brighter than usual.)

And one day, I found IT.

The mother lode. Not just “Rhapsody in Blue,” but “An American in Paris,” “I Got Rhythm,” and some other piano concertos. There’s a reason why [name redacted] uses this music in movies. I don’t think there’s an emotion left unevoked during those sixteen-ish minutes of “Rhapsody in Blue.” I listened to it all the time. It was the score of a million dreams: the love I’d find, the places I’d travel, the adventures I’d have. I even adored the chick on the album cover–so jaunty. That’s what I wanted to be: jaunty. And hot in a blue leotard.

Fast forward a few years…

It was a sultry night in Tampa, and I’d just had dinner at an upscale Cuban restaurant with the man in my life. We’ll call him Pinocchio. We were walking back to the car when Pinocchio decided we should go to another Cuban restaurant. I really don’t remember, but it was huge, with Spanish tile, and a bar. A bar that was rich in ATMOSPHERE. Ceiling fans, maybe, and dark wood. The kind of bar where you felt like if you looked hard enough across the room, you’d see Ernest Hemingway and a couple of journalists sitting with some shady Cubans and drinking correctly. Everyone in a Hemingway novel always knows what to drink in whatever company they find themselves.

I’m not much of a drinker myself. Usually, I just ask for something in coffee. This night, it was Irish whiskey–no whipped cream on top, please, just whipping cream stirred into the coffee. We sat at the bar and absorbed the atmosphere. The perfect backdrop for romance, and I was desperately denying that mine was wheezing–either for more life support or for the plug to be pulled.

A few minutes later, the piano player came back from a break, sat down, stretched his fingers, then plunged into a kickass rendition of “Rhapsody in Blue.” I time-traveled back to my parents’ living room. I saw that young girl watching her parents dance. Dreaming of her future and the places she’d go. And I knew, in that moment, that it wasn’t going to be life support. I was going to pull the plug, because life with a pathological liar is no life at all, no matter how many romantic moments he can provide. It didn’t happen immediately, but George Gershwin broke us up (Riley returned the favor of my youth and picked up MY pieces). In the break-up, I also lost Gershwin, because hearing him reminded me of everything I wanted to forget about Pinocchio, Tampa, and my own stupidity.

Again, fast forward a few years. Tom and I were living in Houston, and I met another man, a man who loved Gershwin. Steve loved him so much that for whatever the musical equivalent of a Master’s thesis is, he’d arranged all of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” for marching band. One afternoon he showed me the stacks of score paper, with the part for every band instrument meticulously done by hand. I can’t even conceive of how much work it must have been to score that lengthy composition for every piece of a marching band rather than orchestra. I listened, spellbound, as he told me what it was like to have an entire band turn and face him, watching for his direction, and that moment when his tribute to such a brilliant composer came rushing at him for the first time on the field.

Steve on a ladder, getting ready to direct a 300-piece marching band, in the 1980s.

When Steve got so sick, and his eyesight was failing, and sometimes his mind didn’t work correctly, I’d often put on a Gershwin tape for him. He had a small conductor’s baton he’d gotten as part of a book, and he’d lie in his hospital bed, eyes closed, and lead his imaginary orchestra with his baton.

And I…fell in love with George Gershwin again.

Previous post about Riley:

December 8, 2005
September 30, 2005