As defined by Marcel Proust in his voluminous opus Remembrance of Things Past, involuntary memory is that memory which we have no control over, and therefore is more powerful than voluntary memory, which can be easily distorted and rewritten. Involuntary memory is an absolute truth and can’t be easily removed. When you hear a word and associate it to a moment or think of your grandmother when you smell a cookie, that’s your involuntary memory kicking the ass of your consciousness. My involuntary memory works in weird ways, and is musical in nature. I hear a particular song on the oldies station and I am automatically taken back to those Tuesday night therapy sessions. The Les Miserables Original Broadway Soundtrack takes me back to being ten and scrubbing my mother’s toilet. There are days a few sedatives and a shotgun would be nice to make this madness stop, but what can you do? Your involuntary memory is a part of you and helps define the unique way in which you view the world.
I view the presence of my involuntary memory optimistically, that is until that album comes on. When those thirteen affectionate songs of bubblegum start playing on heavy rotation in the depths of my cerebral cortex, it’s not enough to wrestle with the idea of being Ernest Hemmingway, if you catch my drift. How ironic that the first song be titled “Thinking of You”. The mere thought of thinking of it is like sipping from the cup of insanity itself. That keyboard solo to start immediately brings to mind the pedestrian melodies of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”. But this is much worse. That was the mullet-tinged cheesiness of the 80’s, a time when I was but an infant. After ten seconds of those elevator keyboards, the song jumpstarts with some simple drumming and a guitar riff that pulled itself out of Don Johnson’s bowels, and shortly after, those first vocals chime in: “Have you ever stood outside a picket fence/ You could see through but you can’t get to the inside/ I sit there and wait/I look at you and anticipate/’What we could be and what we could do”. I can’t help as I listen to sit there and think of what I could do if I weren’t so weak. Turn off the CD player probably. But I can’t. Not now. Not ever. This is my curse. The chains I forged in adolescence have turned into catchy hooks that grip at my ears as if they were rusty pirate earrings.
On to track two. As has been mentioned by the songs writers, the incomprehensible title signifies a transition in time. Every time they sing that magic word it’s a shift from one place to another. This was the first song of theirs I heard. The one that plucked away most of our innocence. The sloppy virgin kiss. The one we’d like to take back. But the acid taste of nubile lips will always burn. And the song will always take me back there. Keep me from moving forward. Try moving. Try progressing. I build up my hopes, my aspirations. MMMBOP, they’re gone. I find that strength, overcome the fate of Sisyphus and push that boulder down the side of the hill, once and for all. MMMBOP. It rolls back.
As you might have surmised by now, the album in question is Hanson’s Middle of Nowhere, and because of it, I’ll never have a peaceful Valentines. I’ll never be truly happy. And, like all great curses, I’ll get used to it to the point that I go to it. It doesn’t come to me. It doesn’t have to. It has festered a hole within me, and will stay there, rotting everything decent within me.
Why? It all started in the ninth grade, the spring of 1998 to be exact. Birds and bees were copulating (producing “beards” I’d assume), my Jewish curly hair was sprouting in places I thought only pedophilic rabbis had, and Seinfeld was about to get cancelled. That’s when I met Chrissy. She was the friend of my friend’s girlfriend or something like that. I was given her number, and being an eager gentleman with loins ever bursting, I gave her a call. We got around to talking about music eventually, and she briefly mentioned that she listened to “weird music”. Intrigued, I started dropping names until something would give; “Gregorian Monk chants? Tori Amos? Huey Lewis”? Not a yes to any of the bands or artists I threw at her. Then she muttered it. “Hanson”.
“Henson? The Muppet guy? Do you listen to the Labyrinth soundtrack on repeat? Bowie dancing the magic dance is awesome!”
“Hanson!!! Those cute boys from Oklahoma”. Hanson. Those Midwestern wunderkinds who managed to sweep the country in syrupy goodness. Like the Osmonds, without the polygamy. Being in an Offspring/Nine Inch Nails “Fuck all authority” phase at the time I started laughing. Then she started telling me just how obsessed she was. Posters and magazine clipping, even going to see them live. I hadn’t thought of Hanson in the least. That was middle school shit to me. I admit, I knew half the words to MMMBOP and thought the drummer was cute, until I found out they were guys, but that happened to the best of us. Hanson was history to me. A year in the life of a teenager is equal to that of twenty adult years. At least.
Desperation makes you believe you’re in love and love makes you do stupid things. Wanting someone who liked Hanson was one of them. We continued talking on the phone for about two more weeks before deciding to meet each other in person. I had already written her sappy poetry (Not unlike Hanson’s lyrics) and used the word “heart” in every single way possible during casual speech. What could go wrong?
I got dropped off at her house on a Saturday at 2:00 and got picked up at 6:30. In between that time would be the most painful four and a half hours of my life, outside of watching Gone With the Wind (another story, for another day, trust me). Unbeknownst to me, she had brought her friend and fellow Hanson fan over to take notes about me. There I was, sweating an Amazon, and there they were, scribbling and giggling. A lump in my throat the size of pre-surgery John Popper formed quickly, and continued to expand in size. All the while Middle of Nowhere was playing on an endless loop in the background making me wish I could teleport to that titular locale and be away from the humiliation I was experiencing.
I spent that night clutching a pillow, taking turns crying in it and trying to suffocate myself with it, but I was so weakened and devastated that I had a better chance of causing myself a sodium overdose from the saline in my tears than I did in finding the strength that would put me out of my misery.
I talked to her a few times afterwards, but things quickly dissolved into nothingness and that was that. But as Metallica says, “The memory remains”. Two years after the incident I purchased the album for a $1.99 in a used CD store. I should’ve destroyed it by now. But I can’t. And I won’t. I’ve always known that being different would cause me to be ridiculed and would eventually leave me unfulfilled and ultimately unloved and that thinking Chrissy could ever do anything but laugh at me was an act of futility. And anytime I hear a reference to Hanson or hear one of their songs, I’m taken back to being a laughing stock in that bedroom. And those songs are playing, and they grow louder and louder. And they always will. Such is my curse. MMMBOP. I’m about to relive it all over again.
But that’s the way it goes. There’s a good chance we all carry our own musical ball and chain, that album or song we lull around, shackled to our feet. The first notes drift into view, and everything freezes. For me, it’s Hanson’s The Middle of Nowhere. Perhaps the one redeemable thought I can imagine as I recall everything, is that whoever you are, you too will absorb these words and think of my sorrow whenever you hear those three boys singing and playing. As they say, misery loves company. So pop in the disc, ask yourself “Where’s the Love?”, and we’ll sob together. Musical therapy at its finest.
