I worked for a while at a diner. Manager said I had to wear that little uniform. Said I was part of the problem.

I have this thing about songs. I know, I know. I’ve been gone for a month and I come back all random. But seriously. I came back. Don’t ask.

Anyway, songs. I doubt I’m alone in this (because I’m never self-absorbed enough to think I’m unique in any real way), but when a song hooks me–I mean really hooks me–I fucking can’t stop listening to it. To the point where the thing ends up on repeat or a tape gets rewound and worn out or a cd gets utterly grooved by my inability to stop playing it.

One of the first songs that pops into my mind that I was consciously aware I was doing this with was the 10,000 Maniacs, Trouble Me. I feel certain I’d done it before, but for whatever reason, my state of self awareness had deveolped enough the day I heard that song for the first time (on a tape Christopher made me one summer before my family’s annual vacation on the beach) that I actually thought to myself–it’s not normal the way I keep playing this song.

It’s like I want to absorb it into my body. Inhale it like air.

There’s no telling what is going to make me connect with a song like that. I never expect it to happen–which makes it even better when it does. It’s like meeting someone for the first time and instantly clicking with them–getting that vibe or whatever chemical thing happens when two people make sense to each other. Only it’s a song, so the conversation, though multi-dimensional, is automatically self contained and without risk.

Music is so hard to explain. Anyone who connects with it knows exactly what I’m saying. It’s one of those unspoken understandings. One of those things that if you’ve ever been in a car with someone, listening to a song on the radio or on a cd (or heaven forfend, a cassette) and when the song ends, you both want to play it again. Well, you know immediately that it’s love or at least depth of understanding that requires no words to define.

And it’s hard for me to separate music from stories. I told a musician recently that while the music is the first thing that grabs me, the words reel me in and complete the picture and when I don’t connect with both it’s usually, well, it’s usually just a first date. But God, when both are there for me it’s pure romance.

Sometimes I post song lyrics here. It frustrates hell out of me that most of the time I can only post the words–the book story–not the musical story that accompanies it.

Opera is the exception and really, it’s almost a relief. I have said before that I really don’t have any interest in the story of an opera. I don’t necessarily want to watch one, or read the libretto, or study the socio-political importance of the composer’s dilemma. I feel about opera the way Morgan Freeman’s character in Shawshank Redemption felt during the scene when Andy locks the warden out of his office and puts that Marriage of Figaro album on the turn-table:

I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.

Instrumental and foreign language music frees me to hear the story of the music. And I believe that story is just as important and powerful as lyrics. But when the two are combined in a language I understand, it becomes impossible for me to hear either alone.

But I was in love with that blonde girl, she kissed me twice behind the counter..

When I was growing up I had secrets. We all do. But I’m lately getting my first real glmpse of a generation gap on the subject of growing up gay. And mostly, I’m thankful for it. For me, where I was and in the context of my experience as a gay teen, finding a voice to relate to in music and literature seemed like a covert affair. Gay artists didn’t come out. Gay literature did not appear on the shelves of Walden Books. Gay stories were sub-text to be rooted out and fished for.

Today’s generation of developing kids can find overt references to their style of love in almost all contemporary genres at the push of a button or the drop of 99 cents. Whether or not those representations are fair, balanced or broad enough is the subject for someone else’s blog. For me it is regularly a remarkable occurance to see pieces of my life, no matter how stereotyped, watered down or sexed-up, in network television shows. movies and pop music.

I am both incredibly happy for and slightly jealous of every confused 16-year old who has access to Ellen, Will & Grace, Queer as Folk, Sarah Waters novels and the bands on Amy Ray’s independent lable.

And this weekend I heard a song that floored me. Floored me in its vocal complexity, lyrical poingency and musical simplicity to the point where it is now playing on repeat. I had to put it on a tape so I could play it in the truck. Like air, I don’t want to be apart from the song right now. And this will pass. It always does. I will continue to love it for time to come but eventually I’ll tire of the repeat, or something new will replace it.

Rght now though, it has the spot. That place that never fills up and is always chasing after more. And I caught the music first. I was mopping the kitchen. Seriously. And I pricked up my ears to hear more. Then I made out some lyrics and I leaned the mop against the wall and walked into the living room going, what the hell? And I started it over. And I sat down on the floor. And I played it again. If I had heard this song when I was 16…good grief I think my head would have exploded.

When I asked her to get into my car, she called her man said, don’t bother her–she called her man said, don’t bother her.

Maybe right now I feel a little bit nostalgiac for that 16-year old. The one who was screwing around with a football player, had a huge crush on Bev Brubaker, thought Nicole Spencer was the most terrifying and intriguing person I’d ever met and couldn’t wait the get the hell out of small-town Ohio and figure out what the hell this lesbian thing was all about.

But I was a young James Dean, with a way with ladies, all the real boys in their black jeans called me crazy–Called me crazy.

I have a thing about songs. And sometimes I need to take a break from sharing with all of you. And sometimes I need to share.

Drop 99 cents on Young James Dean by Girlyman. You may not get it or like it the way I do, but it brought me out tonight. And I am self-absorbed enough to think that’s worth a buck.