The power of positive and sometimes delusional thinking
I skipped ringing in the new year, chose to switch off the light five minutes before midnight on December 31st. Still, I was awake at the moment it turned, was lying in bed whispering to my husband in the dark. We heard firecrackers and whoops of happiness, the joyous drunken sounds of other people. My heart wasn't in it. I just wasn't ready to give up on 2009, didn't feel like shoving into another year with all that pressure to change my ways, to become a better person.
I finally celebrated 2010 on January third, got a little crazy. Yeah. I moved some furniture, switched an entire room around. The living room had become a stale and cluttered space. Even the furniture seemed bored, stuck in place for over two years. Our couch had stretched into a permanent yawn, the lamps sagged with boredom, and the chairs were slouching in defeat. It's been this way for so long because the kid has an attachment to sameness, to stasis, but yesterday I offered him a very compelling reason to shake things up: with the couch across the room, we could build a huge fort between it and the dining room table. Never underestimate the power of a fort on the will of a four-year-old boy: it did the trick. I've included a picture of the perked-up room at the top of this post. It's airy and wood-textured, a comfortable and open space. It fits.
This post was originally about spaces made fresh, about a new year beginning and the value of shaking things up. The living room felt stuck and so did I, but as I shifted the furniture things opened up. My possibilities expanded. My mind, however, wasn't quite ready to completely commit to this topic, or perhaps my mind just works in very mysterious and cloaked ways. Typing "living room" in a preliminary draft led to thoughts of the Bye Bye Birdie song "Got a Lot of Livin' To Do." Oh, yes, there are versions of it out there, including several high school productions muddying up YouTube, but I then stumbled upon Shirley Bassey (to see the movie musical version, in all its campy glory, click here). The song runs for the first three minutes of this clip:
Ms. Bassey is a little brassy here, not too subtle. She belts it out. Still I like her attitude. And look at the date of the recording -- February 22, 1966. This is the actual birthday of a significant person in my life and as I was listening I suddenly pictured him as a tiny thing, a mewling newborn swaddled in white. Maybe his mother cradled him from her hospital bed as she watched Ms. Bassey perform on television. There he was, untouched and innocent, with the whole of life ahead of him. He had a lot of livin' to do (still does, he's just lived almost 44 years of it). I started to cry. It was everything, the hopeful song, the image of the baby full of potential, this strange feeling of inevitable loss, the relentless passage of time, that brought me to tears. The tears weren't totally about him or about the time that we all lose just by living. They were about babies. Or about how we start off so small, so dependent, waiting to be imprinted by circumstance, by imperfect parents, by our own built-in limitations. But the song isn't meant for tears, it's meant for inspiration, an encouragement to live life to its fullest, a message that I may need more than most.
This somehow led to thoughts of another unlikely tearjerker of a song, coincidentally titled "Shirley", by the all-female grunge/punk bank L7. It's about Shirley Muldowney, the first professional female drag racer. L7 mixes simple, in-your-face lyrics with drag racing announcer commentary and the sound of an engine gunning. I have never gotten through it without breaking down, including the four times I heard it while writing this post. Maybe it's the naive idea that it proposes, that we are capable of anything: "How many times must you be told, there's nowhere that we don't go?" (The song is specifically about women being just as capable of men, but I think it can be a universal battle cry for the downtrodden.) I think it's also Shirley's absolute confidence in herself that gets me. In one sample from an interview an announcer asks "What's a beautiful girl like you doing racing in a place like this?" which Shirley answers with one word: "Winning."
Listen to the song if you'd like, though you may need to link to the music site above to hear it in its entirety. Shirley probably won't have the same effect on you as it does on me, though I'd love to know if it does. I've reprinted the lyrics below, but you'll need to hear the chords, the heavy guitars, the whiny machismo of the announcers' patter to feel the full effect. It's almost enough to make you believe in infinite possibility.
These two songs are connected by optimism, by the fantasy that we have time stretched out, a gleaming eternal path of joy, the idea that if we just have enough confidence, enough inner strength, we can let the bad stuff roll right off, can experience the heady completeness of fulfilled potential. "Halting me is a fantasy," as the L7 song goes. The line itself may be a fantasy too, but perhaps one worth believing in, the power of positive and sometimes delusional thinking. If either one of these songs doesn't convince you, try moving some furniture around. It can help to create the illusion of control.
Oh, and Happy New Year! You're alive, so come on and show it -- there's such a lot of living to do!
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(This post is written in the style of Lydia of Writerquake. She often writes compelling mixes of song, image and word, pieces that point to the core, the heart, of the matter. I'm not claiming to do all that, just thought of her as I was writing it and wanted to shout out.)
Shirley by L7
Welcome the first lady to try and qualify in an NHRA-dragster competition ~ Shirley Muldowney!
Feels so real
Crushing the steering wheel
How many times
Must we toe this line
Halting me
Is a fantasy
Cha-cha! call her cha-cha!
What's drag racing coming to?
How many times must you be told
There's nowhere that we don't go
she's got good traction!
I suggest you find a seat in the grandstands, because you don't want to miss this!
She's just here wants
What she wants to do
I wonder if Shirley's got in her to hold that throttle down
kills your joke
as she's burning smoke
Shirley Muldowney is pulling ahead... and she takes the red light
And you will find
Crossing the finish line
Shirley Muldowney has just set a new track record!
Satisfaction!
How much times must you be told
There's nowhere that we don't go
She's got good traction!
What's a beautiful girl like you doing racing in a place like this?
Winning.
Winning.
Winning.
Winning.
Winning.
The lady got through it
Winning.
What's drag racing coming to?
There's nowhere that we don't go
What's a beautiful girl like you doing racing in a place like this?
Winning.
Winning.
Winning.
Winning.
Winning. 