Of Memory and a Silk Stocking

Back in 1959, when I was still a year shy of the lower end of the song's assertion, Pat Boone put out one of his biggest hits 'Twixt 12 and 20, which he asserts are the years when we "learn what life is all about." Maybe a bit of an overreach. But some current research indicates that the songs that we encounter during those years become a lasting part of the "soundtrack of our lives." We recognize them all our lives. Hum them while cleaning the garage, mumble along when they pop up on the radio.

My soundtrack is rather broad - partially because I had access to my older brother's records - so I got stretched between Elvis, The Everly Brothers, The Beach Boys and the British Invasion - The Beatles, The Stones and a bit of The Doors. Some Dylan, Baez, both Guthries, and a touch of country with Dolly, Patsy, and Willie. (My affection for Irish music came later, along with James Taylor -  a North Carolina thing, but I digress.) Later, musicals that I sang in during high school and college sort of slid in to the soundtrack of my life at the end of my 'twixt years.

It is not surprising then that those "'Twixt 12 and 20" artists are heavily represented on the streaming playlists that accompany me as I labor over my drawing. Nor is it - I would assert - odd that the drawing and the music induce a meditative state. But, interestingly, it is not one that looks forward to "things I hope to do when I grow up." Being already "grown," at least chronologically, the meditations tend to melt into memory.  Again, not surprising - given that I am drawing - those memories are visual - somehow cinematic in nature. But it is a heavily edited memory movie, and I get the right of final cut.

I have always been an optimist and a romantic. Those biases are evident in my memory movie. I remember reading that in the midst of my 12 to 20 era, [1967] Swedish director Bo Widerberg was making his classic film Elvia Madigan. He achieved the romantic glow he was after by stretching a silk stocking over the camera's lens. I sort of see life that way, and it is evident in the memory movie that unspools as I draw my images, lost in the soundtrack of my life.

To understand further the biases in my memory movie you need to know that I was the youngest of three siblings. I remember my mother explaining it this way once. "'We tried to raise Jim [the eldest] according to "the book." With Peggy [the middle child] we compromised on "the book." And when Robby came along, we just threw the book away.'" So, spoiled? Yeah, maybe a touch. 

But whatever the reason, my memory movie is shot for the most part, in soft focus.  It is not that there are not glitches in the film. Losing a job I really liked in New Mexico. A divorce where I lost the support of a cadre of "friends" and the regular company of my children - an inevitable "her friends, his friends, her world, his world" kind of thing. Two bouts with multiple myeloma. Yeah. OK. Some glitches. But remember, my movie - my final cut.

There is a part of the experience of watching movies that no longer exists in the digital world. Movies used to be made of "film." Long strips of cellulose and later plastic. To move from one scene to another you would physically cut the film strips into pieces and glue the desired "shots" together - the process was called splicing. My undergraduate senior project was a film called "Scratches on My Favorite Phonograph Records."  Yeah. Very sophomoric, despite being a senior. I know. But I have already confessed to being a romantic.  Anyhow, there were a bunch of splices in the film. And my lack of expertise, the fragile nature of 8mm film, and the questionable state of the projectors in the department, resulted in more than one break while showing the film.  This resulted in a distinctive death rattle from the projector as several frame of film raced chaotically across the screen before either the frozen image of a burnt frame or a glaring pure white beam erased any form of narrative. You closed your eyes against the flare.

That is how the glitches of my life are treated in the final cut of my memory movie.  A quick rattle. A mental whoosh, a brief flash of painful light. And then the screen quickly fills with another image, tranquil, calm, pleasant and happy. I assume therapists would argue that "You need to confront those 'scratches on the phonograph records.' Dig in there! Come to terms!"

And to what end? I remain an optimistic romantic. Happy and content for the most part. I remain open to healing the scratches, and have left doors open. But the final cut of my memory movie lingers most endearingly over those moments of love, beauty, friendship, and wonder glimpsed through a silk stocking.