Songs In My Head

Sorry, fun law post fans. We're on another sappy personal post today. BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME.

The summer after my freshman year of college, for some reason I don't remember, I decided to see a therapist in Westchester. There were two things I liked about him: He thought the problems I had in my high school relationship were pretty mundane and not evidence of any larger issues, and his mannerisms reminded me of my friend Cat's dad Bob, who tends to crack me up. There were two things I didn't like about him: While it was nice that he thought I wasn't messed up, he tended to err on the side of not taking me especially seriously, and he spent most of our sessions trying to convey to me how big of a deal he was in the world of psychology. I cared a lot, as you might imagine. Anyway, one of the ways he proposed to demonstrate I was an easy case for him was that I tell him about a song stuck in my head, and he would tell me what it meant. Party tricks at the shrink's office! Woohoo!

Shockingly enough, I actually did have a line running through my head at the time. It was half from Fiddler on the Roof and half from La Cage aux Folles: "Here in Anatevka, we live life—how shall I put it?—on an angle." He told me it was my own personal commentary on the weirdness of Westchester (I think he actually started his sentence with "Well, that's easy..."). If you're still picturing 18 year old me accurately, you see me fanning myself with excitement, batting my eyelashes and exclaiming, "Why, doctor! You have the most marvelous insight into my little mind!" In other words, his party trick did absolutely nothing for me, not least because the songs in my head when I was 18 didn't bear a great relationship to my emotional state.

But they totally do now. It's scary.

Allow me to lead you through the last week and a half...in musical theater! I recommend listening to the YouTube links but not necessarily watching them. Some of the actors are better than others.

The beginning of last week was all Stephen Sondheim's The Miller's Son (lyrics). It's almost certainly my favorite Sondheim song, and the all-time greatest artistic defense of slutdom.

There was no music on Thursday.

Starting Friday, as things got better and I got into "anticipating nostalgia" mode, I switched over to Bill Finn's phenomenal ballad When the Earth Stopped Turning (lyrics). He wrote the song after the death of his mother, and it is explicitly about dying, but it really works beautifully for any expected parting of people. Plus, I think it operates as the perfect defense against anyone who thinks cuss words are always inappropriate or uncreative. (I highly recommend downloading the Carolee Carmello recording of this one instead of listening to the YouTube video. It's available on iTunes.)

And then today, as I moved into the first stages of actual nostalgia, I came to Jerry Herman's Song on the Sand (you can catch all the lyrics by listening, but whatever). I've actually never loved Song on the Sand. I can't help but think of the Forbidden Broadway where Robert Goulet mumbles "I sing la da da da, da da da, when I don't know the words..." But I guess any song that can into my head via the route of under my skin gets some points.

So, our "fifth roommate" came late last night. I haven't seen her yet, but I'm intimidated by her awesome Pasta del Capitano toothbrush. All I have is some little Colgate thing. But nothing can overtake my huge, clunky, I-can't-possibly-need-this Intuition razor. If only I could get this worked up about the paper I have to finish by Friday afternoon.

EDIT: Just met her. She seems really sweet. I need dinner and wine. So much wine.