and these memories lose their meaning
Let It Be
This is one of those songs that if I think too hard about it, it might give me the same kind of annoyance (from being overplayed) that Idina Menzel’s “Let It Go” does. But it doesn’t matter - every time I hear those simple piano chords, my fingers tap them out in unison, and I am brought back to quiet afternoons/evenings when I was very little, usually curled in a ball under the stairs or between couches because everything felt too much, closing my eyes, and focusing on nothing but these chords, being played over and over by my eldest brother. When I touch the keys of the old piano now, most times they’re the first chords I play, without even thinking.
Strawberry Fields Forever
These were the words that would calm me as a child, every time I realise that for some reason my brain doesn’t work like anyone else’s - “no one I think is in my tree / I think it must be high or low.” Sometimes I felt like a god child and sometimes I felt like a monster, but I never felt I was like anyone else. As I grew older I pushed those words aside, thinking them egotistical (as John kind of was) and vain, thinking every kid thought they were different. And part of it was probably that. The words “living is easy with eyes closed” definitely resonated to 10-year-old me watching the adults say things they don’t mean and pretend that some things weren’t true just to keep some sort of status quo or polite pretense. As I grew older I pushed those words aside, and learned to act like them, thinking that maybe they too felt wrong and cold and heavy every time they make polite chitchat or hold words in to seem “nice”, and that leaving behind the childhood impulse to only say true things and not say meaningless words like “thanks” (which doesn’t seem to convey the amount of appreciation I felt, and sometimes felt dismissive to me) and to not flinch at these words… I thought that embracing the monster inside was what being an adult meant.
I Saw Her Standing There
What little I knew about being a teenager, I learned from the Beatles. I was probably known as an awkward dork in high school - at least, I know that’s what I was known as in college - but John and Paul and George and Ringo held my hand throughout most of it. I don’t/can’t express it most of the time, but I am highly empathetic. And what I knew of “normal” feelings and micro expressions, I learned from books and songs. Never having been to a dance floor before, listening to Paul’s winking “you know what I mean” made me feel everything he was singing, more than any of the Sweet Dreams books I managed to get from the secondhand bookstore in Pasar Seni. I cataloged that feeling for future reference, not (yet) knowing that it was excess, unnecessary data that would make me think I felt things I didn’t really, when I got platonic crushes in my late teens.
Yesterday
Honestly, as an adult I do find this song rather soppy. As a teenager going through my most angst-ridden days, it felt very appropriate, especially since many a friendship I had might have soured from my not yet learning to hold truths inside instead of saying them out loud. “I said something wrong / now I long for yesterday” - oh, the hard lessons one learns in school. It makes me want to laugh now because I probably still don’t think most of the stuff I said were offensive (nor were they meant to be) if I remembered them at all.
It Won’t Be Long
In college, our midterm for Acting II was staging a two-person scene. We were assigned our partners and scenes, so we only got to choose which of the two characters we wanted to be, and how we wanted to stage it. I don’t remember the name of my classmate who was my partner, but she’s a gorgeous blonde and she’s always been nice to me. The play we got was set in the mid-60s and one of the characters was a hardcore Beatles fan, so I chose to play her. We used “It Won’t Be Long” to set the scene and even though I can’t even remember the name of the play or the characters by now (most of my college days were a blur to me, because I went through the entire time depressed and overstimulated and constantly on the verge of an anxiety attack) when I listen to this song now I remember every thing the character I played felt, listening to her favourite band, waiting by the window, for her best friend to come over after being separated all summer… not yet knowing that her best friend would return from camp all different and too “grown up” to hang out with her.
“Every day we’ll be happy, I know / now I know that you won’t leave me no more.”
“You know the reason The Beatles made it so big?...'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' First single. Fucking brilliant. Perhaps the most fucking brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. That's what everyone wants. Not 24/7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche...or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have such a feeling that they can't hide. Every single successful song of the past fifty years can be traced back to 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' And every single successful love story has those unbearable and unbearably exciting moments of hand-holding.”
- Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn
Somehow this week's newsletter became a whole Beatles thing, and the funny thing is, what brought me here was Chuck Berry. I was really in the mood for T.J. Klune's The House in the Cerulean Sea which is a fantastic book I can never recommend enough, and I started listening to the playlist I made on Spotify for the book because I didn't have time to actually reread it (plus, I was in a mall, far from my copy of the book.)
The playlist was had a bunch of Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens songs and Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven" (which the Beatles covered in one of their earlier albums). Buddy Holly was one of my first celebrity crushes (yes I do often crush on dead people) and I listened to "That'll Be The Day" half a dozen times before coming across The Quarrymen's cover of the song on YouTube. And seeing John and Paul's faces on the video made me listen to The Beatles' covers of Chuck Berry songs and the songs and err... this happened.
This is how my mind works sometimes. Sorry, I guess? Especially since I had planned out an entirely different post which now may not happen, oops.
As usual, drink lots of water, and STAY SAFE!!