Things I wish I had recorded, over the course of my life, so I could hear them at the push of a button whenever I felt I needed to:
- My mum and grandma, singing me to sleep
- Tony telling the dream of the stick sister
- Chanel and me speaking Konglish
- Jenny laughing
- Dionne and me singing TV theme songs to London and back on Fine Arts tours
- Kirk working himself into a lather singing "Green, green Rover"
- Terry ("Rash Wanton") saying, "I'm staying out of this one" or "Quoi?"
- The drunk Korean and his mates singing outside my window at 2 a.m. one morning
- Avery, at 2 or 3, saying, "De ya, be ya be ya be ya," (translation: "See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya")
- Liam, around the same age, saying, "You're my boy, Aunty"
- Kyle saying pretty much anything.
Funny, I can still hear all these voices in my head, digitalized or recorded or however the brain captures such things and keeps them, but occasionally I'd like to hear them outside of my head. If not in person, then in some way recorded and played back, out loud and for real. Can a sound be tangible? Perhaps not, but it can be real.
The weird thing is that the sound bytes I want to replay most are not so much monumental. They aren't the landmark moments of friendship or life. They are friendship and life. They're the most off-hand slices of life - the times when we forgot ourselves and just lived.
What prompted this out-of-the-blue missive? Well, it's kinda silly, really. I was laying on my back after doing a few curl-ups, when Sarah Vaughan came round. So I picked her up and balanced her on my legs, and suddenly felt like I should sing to her, "Green, green Rover; green, green Rover; see Rover grow; see Rover grow; green, green Rover . . . " (long story, don't ask).
From there, it just hit me - I've had the privilege of having some weird, wonderful people in my life. I mean, really weird. And really wonderful. Sometimes both at the same time. And their eccentricities have added so much to my life, in the way of colour and texture, it would be nice to replay it every now and then. To remind myself. To relive these conversations, these wild adventures. To ensure they were real.
Still, I suppose, the memory is something.
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3 comments:
My husband asking me to marry him; my niece, at two, saying of a piece of string she was then using as a scarf "But Mom! It's my whole life!"; my nefew telling me he hates me, he really really hates me - before climbing onto my lap for a hug; my grandfather telling me "Don't tell the others, but you're my favourite" or that I was a "nice fat gurdie"(really, anything at all in my grandfather's voice, anything at all). ~ d
I wish I'd got my grandparents to tell a story each on tape. My paternal grandmother used to tell a great one about dreaming she was a chicken with a chickenhawk after her. I have GOT to get my dad to sing the one that finishes "grandma, swinging on the outhouse door (without her shirt on), swinging on the outhouse door". W
you betcha! ~ d
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