2023/4. LOST LYRICS

Tonight, we were watching an episode of The Chosen that correlated with the scripture story we studied in church, where Jesus healed the man with palsy. At one point in the show we missed what Peter said to Mathew, so we rewound the recording. Hooray for technology! On the second-go-round we still couldn’t understand what he said, so we rewound again and added closed captioning. Again… technology! We finished the show, prayed together, then Timo went up to bed, Dave pulled up his calendar for court tomorrow, and I went to finally get out of my Sunday clothes. I instinctively started the washing machine in our bedroom closet so I could wash Timo’s livery jacket that smells like goats. At the same time, I became conscious of the layer of music playing in my brain. Did you know most people have a layer of music playing in their head at any given time? We are rarely conscious of it, but its true. When I became aware of this phenomenon I started taking note of it for myself and sure enough, there is almost always some random song underneath a couple layers of other thought. If I am in the process of writing a song it is usually that song, and it ends up driving me batty. Songwriting can be a blurse that way. 

Tonight, I recognized the tune as one from the made for TV Rogers and Hammerstein version of Cinderella. “In my own little corner in my own little chair, I can be whatever I want to be.” I brought the tune to the surface and started humming, eventually letting the words spill into the forefront. First verse, second line…”On the wings of my fancy I can fly anywhere, and the world will open its arms to me.  I’m a young…” hmmmm, I know I’m a princess, but from what country? I racked my brain to take me back to our house on Old Clairton Road and our black and white TV. Leslie Ann Warren is singing, her hair wrapped in a kerchief. There’s a whisp of smoot on her cheeks as she sings. 

“Seriously, I know this song! “I tell myself. I’d sung it a hundred times, pretending to be her, knowing I was exactly the kind of girl Prince Charming would fall in love with (before he grew out of his castle and became Dr Alan Quartermain on General Hospital.)  I could not for the life of me find the lost lyric in my head. I know it’s in there rattling around somewhere!

In the olden days, information was available to common folk in one of three places:.

1.     Mom or Dad. (I should like to say teachers, but in those days I didn’t ask teachers random questions. We just tried to be dutiful students and answer their questions.)

2.     The set of orange skinned Childcraft books that lined up regimentally on the lower bookshelf, minus the Stories & Songs volume that fell in the bathtub. Or the more mature set of Encyclopedia Britannica strategically placed too high for little hands to reach. Both sets circa Nineteen-Fifty-Something.

Or

3.     The Library, a quarter mile down the road and only open on weekdays until 8 and Saturday until 4. 

If what you wanted was the lyric to a new-ish song you were generally out of luck unless there was a record store nearby and the liner notes contained lyrics.

 

Now I am an old-ish woman with a stacked washer and dryer in her bedroom closet. As I scooped a grainy mound of laundry soap into the washing machine and slipped my nightgown over my head, I sang the song-worm aloud, hoping there would be an auditory trigger that made the missing lyric fall out. But alas, it wasn’t there. Eventually I found myself, instinctively, flopping into my recliner with my computer on my lap. A click-click-click into a search bar and within seconds I not only found the lyric but also had a sweet little ten-minute whirlwind romance the prince charming of my childhood. 

There is so much at our fingertips nowadays. I am amazed, with the immediate access technology gives us to all sorts of sweet reminiscences, that we get anything done at all.

For all its drawbacks, I celebrate technology. Otherwise, there would be a serious brain wormhole by morning from a futile search in the catacombs of my memory for lost lyrics.

Norway, by the way. The princess in the song is Norwegian. Sheesh, I’m glad to know that!

Good night.