I think I’ve mentioned before that I am not cool. Definitely not cool. I won’t argue the why’s and wherefore’s here (but the fact that I just said “wherefore’s” should clue you in); you need to take me at my word this time.
The thing is, my husband Is cool. Very, very cool. And so, in the fifteen and a half years (!) we’ve been married, some of his cool has, conceivably, leaked onto me. I enjoy this very much.
Because of him, for example, I have Very Cool taste in music. U2 is just the beginning. I listen to a lot of cool stuff– and enjoy it– because of his kind introduction. Ozomatli, for example, is a group I know and enjoy. Ben Harper, yes. My mini-van might very well be the only one in any given parking lot with an iPod that belongs to the mom, and if that’s not true, then maybe it is true that mine is the only Mom-iPod with Radiohead loaded on it. I love Radiohead.
Lately, when I’m cooking or doing dishes, I am listening again and again to Coldplay, whose latest c.d., X&Y, is Really Outstanding. I don’t need to sing along: this is music for listening, for meditating, for carrying your subconcious mind while you are idly peeling potatoes. It is music that is good Loud. It has an Insistence, and the lead singer’s voice has a Need, that Means Something to me.
What the words mean, I don’t exactly know. I think about them, as I am wont to do, though I don’t generally bother asking Bill his opinion on this. No matter the artist, song or lyric, his response to a song’s meaning generally is, “I don’t know,” and, as I can make neither heads nor tails of Coldplay’s lyrics myself, I hardly imagine that Bill is wasting his time on them.
Still, they register in my mind. I might, from time to time, find myself singing along. This one grabs me: “Lights will guide you home and ingnite your bones, and I will try to fix you.” You are not supposed to try to fix people; it doesn’t work. I know this. But this is a great song. It is number 4 on the c.d., and it builds to an almost maniacal intensity. I like this Very Much. We could all use a little more maniacal intensity, don’t you think? Especially in the suburbs.
So the other evening Bill comes home and I am listening– surprise– to a little Coldplay, and I comment to him on the lyrics. It’s a song (number 3) whose lyrics really have held my attention. “Maybe you’ll know when you see it; Maybe if you say it, you’ll mean it,” and then he goes on to sing something worthy of great literature, something that calls to mind some of Hawthorne’s symbolism and, at the same time, something of biblical proportions: “And when you find it, you keep it, in a permanent stain.”
“What is it he is saying here, do you suppose, Bill?” I don’t really believe that he’ll have an opinion being, as I said before, Far More Interested in the sound than the meaning, but I think maybe this grabbed his attention, too. Maybe he, too, hears the epic potential in these lines.
His answer comes quickly, lightly, with shocking clarity. Of course he’s right. It’s Not “a permanent stain,” but rather “a permanent state.”
Which reminds me that, in addition to loving great literature, I also spend– mom that I am– a lot of time doing laundry.
Sigh.
