I Can Hear Music

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263344244356526863.post-34432862913378263712008-07-11T09:12:00.002-04:002008-07-11T10:00:42.813-04:00I Can Hear MusicI got my first job when I was fourteen years old. I remember being encouraged to do this by my mother, which probably wanted to rid the house of my sulky, preteen insanity if only for a few hours a week. I got hired quickly at Walker's Dry Cleaners on highway seven, which was a relatively short walk from my house. The job wasn't that exciting, but most evenings were pretty quiet so I'd spend most of my work hours chatting with whoever I was on shift with, eating candy from the vending machine, and sometimes watching the tiny black and white TV in the back room. I wasn't even expected to cash out at the end of the night, the manager always did it the following morning. I was essentially paid to be a warm body behind the cash register and to occasionally retrieve customers' clothing from the giant racks behind me. The job did allow me to make my own money, money which, when I turned fifteen and discovered sub culture, I used to buy cassette tapes, band t-shirts, and second-hand dresses. But midway through my grade ten year, I cottoned on to something that was more enticing than all the ill-fitting 1950's prom dresses in the world: the opportunity to get out of the suburbs. The school board was offering a trip to Switzerland for students who wanted to spend their summer taking French credits. We'd stay all together in a dorm-type building, and go to classes all morning. Afternoons were for "improving our French conversation skills" (which we did by walking around town eating ice cream and speaking to each other exclusively in English). This trip was my ticket out of suburbia for an entire month of the coming summer. It would mean doing something way more exciting than reading Margaret Atwood novels behind the counter at the dry cleaners and being forced to occasionally care for my little brother, who at that time I found completely unpalatable. My parents said they'd pay for half the trip fees if I paid for the other half. I immediately started squirrelling away my paltry, minimum wage dry cleaner paycheques. The last thing I bought before I stopped spending money on random stuff, was a Sonic Youth "Goo" t-shirt that I still own. I saved enough for my half of the trip and happily flew off to <a href="http://switzerland.isyours.com/e/guide/valais/leysin.html">Leysin</a>, Switzerland for the month of July. It wasn't quite what I expected. My roommate, Erin, was fantastic, and a lot of the other kids were okay, but the bulk of the group was made up of very wealthy older teenagers who were taking the trip as a kind of last hurrah before they graduated. I'm willing to bet they didn't have to work minimum wage jobs to pay for their trips. Especially since a few of them actually had family members and boy/girlfriends who flew in to visit them while they were there. That summer was when my obsession with music was first taking it's dramatic hold on me. I had discovered a lot of new bands that I liked, and was slowly edging away from popular music. That said, I wasn't yet in full punk-rock snob mode and I was happily obsessed with all kinds of music, loving, as I still do, a great pop song regardless of who sang it. I was also a ridiculous romantic, and my over-the-top crushes on various boys were made more insane by the soundtracks I attributed to them. Leysin was quiet and sleepy for most of the summer. The notable exception to this was its week long gigantic rock festival that zillions of people travelled to each summer. The year we were there I saw The Pogues, The Soupdragons*, and Jesus Jones at the festival, and it was highly exciting for me. However, I couldn't afford to see the headliners, INXS, who were playing on a different night. I remember thinking that I had kind of outgrown INXS, who had been one of my favourite bands in the heady days of grade six, but I still loved, loved, loved the song "Never Tear Us Apart". I listen to it now and I have no idea what I liked so much about it. I can't get that feeling back, but I can sure remember how much I liked it. On the night that INXS played, most of the rich kids went down to the festival to see them. Erin and I stayed in our room and promptly fell asleep on our bunkbeds. But I woke up when I heard the first strains of "Never Tear Us Apart" drifting up through the mountains and in through our balcony doors. I climbed down off my bunk, wrapped in my comforter, and stumbled over to the balcony. Pushing open the swinging wooden doors, I was treated to a view of mountains illuminated by a dizzying blanket of stars, the music festival a glowing roar far down in the valley. It was quite a feeling, a rush of appreciation for my own life which suddenly, through travel and the discovery of something, music, that was all mine to love and obsess about, had become drastically more independent than it had ever been before. I sat on the balcony and listened to the song until it was over. The crowd roared and applauded as I felt my way back to bed in the dark. Erin slept through the whole thing, and asked me in the morning how I'd managed to knock all of her possessions off the shelf by the sink. * That Leysin experience came to mind last night when I was sitting at my desk and I suddenly heard the strains of "Sloop John B" wafting in through the window. Oh that's nice, I thought, Someone's playing a Beach Boys record...Wait! No! It's not a record! Brian Wilson was playing at Bluesfest and thanks to a quiet night and perhaps a lucky wind direction, I could hear him from my apartment. I rushed out onto my back steps and climbed up to stand on the railing, holding onto the bottom of my upstairs neighbour's fire escape to steady myself. Our back lot was quiet and dark, lit slightly by the glow of all my neighbours' windows. I stayed balanced up there through "Wouldn't it be Nice" which has always been my favourite Beach Boys songs. A song about longing for an adult life and the independence that goes with it. And on my way back inside I thought about my fifteen year old self, longing for a life of music and adventure, and accomplishment, and how she'd probably be pretty happy with the way things turned out. Even thought I don't like INXS anymore. J. *They were my favourite of all the bands (though I now think The Pogues really should have taken that title) and I brought home long sleeved t-shirts for myself and my friend Mona. We wore those shirts to death for all our remaining high school years. Mine said "Love" on the front and "God" on the back, which I always worried would make people think I was religious.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6263344244356526863-3443286291337826371?l=alsoatalker.blogspot.com'/></div>J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12260580747334230342noreply@blogger.com2