Michael Recommends: “Alone Again” by Gilbert O’Sullivan
There’s a scene in The Virgin Suicides that’s all about vinyl. Lux breaks curfew after the school dance, and the Lisbon Girls’ conservative parents keep them locked away from the world to retaliate. The neighborhood boys obsessed with them spend months spying on them, puzzling how to make contact. They realize the simplest solution is the best. They pick up the phone. They call the Lisbon landline and hold the phone’s mouthpiece to the speakers of their record player, playing “Hello It’s Me,” as if the girls have been just waiting for them. Then the girls return the call, “Alone Again.” Back and forth they call, to say hello, to say they’re alone, to say come to me whenever you’re lonely.
I first read The Virgin Suicides when I moved to Japan after college, a postgrad book club a friend and I had designed to stay sharp. On a Skype call, we discussed the book. When I settled into the movie after, sitting on the floor of my studio apartment, alone, this scene called up my mom. Never before had anyone lived so far in our family. She’d grown up down the road from all her Italian aunts, uncles, and cousins. Before I left, she’d get teary doing the dishes, listening to Carole King. Now watching this scene, with these songs she loves, I think of what we can share over Skype, how different it is to email a link to this movie clip than to listen to the song together, to hold the receiver to my ear to hear the one that she chooses to play back.
