Songs

This past year there have been songs with seemingly no apparent connection to Adrianna, or at least no obvious association to her life or my life with her that I’m aware of consciously, that have none the less caused me to cry when I heard them.

I’m not talking about obvious songs that I have always directly associated with her, examples of which include my own songs, the entire Rent oeuvre, selections from Carousel, “Father & Son” by Cat Stevens, or “Isn’t She Lovely” by Stevie Wonder, to name just an extremely small sample of a much larger set.

No, I didn’t know these songs would do anything to me, but when I heard them suddenly I’m filled with sorrow and despair. I’m not sure if it’s the lyrics (though I think not; I’m not much of a lyric listener) or perhaps the progression of melody or chords, but it’s something.

The first one that had this effect was when Cindy was playing a trailer on YouTube for Interstellar, and for some reason the main theme just broke me into pieces and I had to ask her to turn it off. I still don’t know why. I thought long and hard about it, and of course the movie is basically the story of a father and daughter, of life and death. Maybe somehow that got locked into my brain and the music created the association that after my daughter’s death causes issues. Maybe, but this connection seems specious (at best.)

The newest song, however, doesn’t make any sense at all. I first noticed it about three months ago when I was watching some old rerun of some 80s sitcom on a station like MeTV or Antenna TV late one night and “The Hogan Family” started next. The theme song caused me to break down and cry, and since then whenever I even think of the theme song and hear it in my head, I have to fight back tears.

Why? I did watch this show in first runs when it started as “Valerie” before being renamed “Valerie’s Family” after Valerie Harper left because of a contract dispute, before finally settling on “The Hogan Family.” Interestingly, it is the only TV show to be a Neilson ratings hit under three different titles, but such interesting trivia is not why we’re hear today.

Now, some (most?) of you may not know and certainly not care that “The Hogan Family” as I’ll call it from here on out is, for some reason, set in Oak Park, IL, my home town. I have no idea why this is so. Maybe one of the writers is from there, maybe they threw a dart at a map. I have no idea. And it’s not like it’s actually shot in Oak Park. Even the opening montages over the years during the credits show images that are clearly not Oak Park… though in fairness, some of the shots could have been filmed in my village. So the setting can’t be it. Plus, Adri, furthermore, is not from there in any event.

Of course, it could remind me of my childhood, and the more optimistic time that represented for me, but many TV shows would do that, and I don’t cry, for example, when I hear the theme to “The Bob Newhart Show.”

It must be a combination of the melody and the lyrics. The song is called “Together Through The Years,” and of course I have always had a complicated relationship with Time and the passage thereof. And it does speak of togetherness through this passage of time:

Life is such a sweet insanity
The more you learn, the less you know
In the heart of every family
There's a love that starts by letting go

Step by step and day by day
Reaching out along the way
Hand in hand, we face our fears
Together through the years

We get closer, through happiness and tears
And in our hearts we share
The laughter and the sadness
A special kind of madness
Together through the years

Life is such a sweet insanity
It's nice to know your friends are near
In the heart of every family
There's a love that's waiting there for you
Through the years

The melody, furthermore, especially during the “we get closer” verse, seems to hit all my melancholy musical signposts and appears to have what I call “moles:” musical notes or resolution that breaks what is expected, often (but not always) in the form of an accidental in the melody line, but it can also occur in the rhythm or the chord progression.

One of the reasons that, to me, “I Want To Hold Your Hand” by Lennon and McCartney is so catchy to me and so “yummy” for lack of a better word is that 7^th chord they play unexpectedly at the end of each verse. (That, along with Paul’s little five-note bass motif at the end of every other line, obviously.)

“Together Through the Years” doesn’t have anything so obvious (or yummy,) but still, I think the melody progression in that verse along with the theme of the lyrics and perhaps also smattered with a bit of Oak Park nostalgia is the culprit here. But this also seems specious.

Who knows what other nondescript song will trigger me. I’ll keep everyone updated.