Life Lessons in Vinyl

When I was a child, after my father died and my mother was trying to figure out life as it would be from now on, I spent an inordinate amount of hours alone in my room, listening to music.

I had a large collection of albums, all presents from my much older siblings — two brothers and a sister — all older enough that I adored them unconditionally. I was eleven, they weren’t at home much anymore, and in my mind, whatever was being sung on those gifts to me was the wisdom I knew they wanted me to have.

Did they realize they were sending me the only advice about life I ever remember getting? The only kind I remember without dismissiveness or outright criticism in its tone for as long as I still lived at home?

Did they know I was on more intimate terms with Simon and Garfunkel or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s philosophies and experiences of life than I was with anyone I knew personally? … I’ve never asked.

When a new album arrived in a brightly wrapped (or not) package, I ran upstairs to my funky little record player, plopped on the album and carefully added the stack of three pennies to the end of the needle arm so the music kept playing without skips even if I were dancing.

That long-ago me loved to have a reason to dance.

So eager was I for the tunes rising up out of those grooves, for the melody that would wrap around me as cocooning as a down comforter, for the universe of musical notes that helped me soar.

Transported.

Coping.

I had allies in my musical world, I had company. With music, I was skipping to Scarborough Fair with Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel or I felt Tied to the Whipping Post just the way Gregg Allman did, and when I couldn’t keep in all my confused emotions, Simon and Garfunkel reminded me that I Am a Rock.

And a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries. (Boy was I a misguided mascot for this one for years as I also stepped outside and smoked myself a J: Late in the Evening…or morning…or both. but that was later).

Any music I was thrilled with, as long as it came from my brothers or my sister, as long as it took me away from the current cold and lonely world of grieving mother and the slowly growing realization that not only would there be no sight of my father again, but apparently Dad’s dying was catching as I was a pariah at school. (That was probably going on before, to be fair, I was weird, but that wasn’t as clear to me then.)

The one song I couldn’t fathom, though, couldn’t find a single relating cell in my body, was Our House, on Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s Deja Vu.

While I knew I’d want to marry someone who would make things all right like A Poetry Man (skipping the wife he went home to), the vision for Our House was blank.

Two cats in the yard? Play your love songs all night long, for me, only for me? Now everything is easy ’cause of you?

What?? What was that like?

I wanted that. Whatever the hell they were singing about, I wanted it.

Badly.

Fast forward a couple decades….

When I heard CSN&Y’s Our House again last week for the first time in eons, I was transported again, as I am when I hear any of those old songs of that era — especially the ones that were seemingly my sole source of how-to-do-life guides.

I get it now.

I have it now. Our House.

…play your love songs all night long for Me… only for Me…

Thanks for the life lessons, guys, you musicians and lyricists out there.

And, of course,

Thank you, my Love…