Verdi Cries *

“With just three days more I’d have just about learned the entire score to Aida.”

This song has always touched me deeply. There are a lot of theories about the meanings and intent behind it, though supposedly in a BBC interview, Natalie Merchant herself said it was much more prosaic. While on vacation, the man next door drove her crazy by playing opera on a phonograph day and night.

However, being the type of artist she is, she couldn’t help but layer more symbolism and mystery on top of it. Or maybe it had some depth of meaning to personal to reveal.

I highly recommend you find and listen to it either before, or while you read this piece.

First of all, let me say this: to experience the song like I do you have to be, like me, in the approximate 50% of the population that experiences what medical scientists call “Frission”. No, this is not some new variant of nuclear energy. Frission is the ability to feel physical sensations when listening to music. No one is quite sure why this happens, but we know what it does and how it works. Without leaving my lane, let’s just say there is a stronger connection between the auditory processing and emotional control centers of the brain in some people. The connection is strong enough to give you chills or other sensations when you hear a piece of music you really like.

If you have ever been listening to music and it made you feel so good, like almost high, so that you had to repeat it straight away you are probably in that part of the population.

What I like about this piece is the number and different types of feelings it can evoke.

Listening to it, I can go back to an island in northern Lake Michigan, watching the sky darken while slowly exchanging the sunset for the aurora. We lay there on the beach, the two of us, watching the stars compete with the magnetic fields until finally the stars won out. It was like being in a planetarium, only more intense. I bet someone comparing that sky to what you could see at a planetarium would label the real one fake. We drank the pure cold water from the lake, then rinsed off and woke up with the sun, the sound of the waves and the gulls functioning as our alarm clock. There were only nine of us on that island, all part of a hiking club. None of us had met each other prior to the hike. But on this long stretch of beach, our companions had left us alone in welcome solitude. And so we lay there, watching the universe as if we were the only ones in it. Things like this sometimes happen on this type of trip, whether they be ski clubs, travel clubs, or wilderness clubs like ours. The ten days or so is compressed into a lifetime. A short lifetime with strangers, and then it’s over and so it was… because those were the unspoken rules. It is a fond memory, and that is just it. No regrets, nothing that could or should have been. Just nice.

Or sitting around a campfire in Upstate, New York. Hearing the pop of the logs, seeing the sparks rise into the sky, smelling the wood turn to ash and hearing the chorus of bullfrogs singing like a chaotic choir from their hidden risers around the lake shore. It was as if Stravinsky and Thoreau had collaborated with the frogs to make some deranged symphony. Some memories mature over time. Now when I think about the many summer camps I attended, camps that got me out of the city for an entire summer, I realize how lucky I was. Imagine being poor and yet being able to have those experiences. Some clever people had my back. The feeling here is grateful.

I don’t even know how to process my feelings about my summer in Iowa when I turned eight years old. I had not yet been to my first all summer sleep away camp, so this was my first real experience far far from home, in another world really. Swimming in rivers, jet flights across the country, doing farm chores and playing in barns was not something poor kids from Queens got to do. Again, people had my back. Aunts, uncles, second cousins. My extended family didn’t look like America’s definition of a tight family. That’s not something someone from the outside would think. That is unless, they knew all the quiet things that went on…all the care, all the sacrifice. So much sacrifice. So much kindness. Now, they are all gone or disappeared to some neverland where lost loved ones go. This one hits way too hard.

And that summer, compressed into a lifetime, bursting at the seams, was a microcosm of what our family was.

There is also wistfulness. I lived in an all graduate dorm while I was pursuing my masters degree in Computer Science. It connects in my mind with the shared, yet solitary feeling that Merchant conveys. I lived in a large suite, and the common area was always full of fun boisterous people. As graduate students for the most part, we didn’t have time to make friends other than those around us, which meant our friends were a strange, beautiful coed mix of nationalities, cultures and interests. Still we were cliquish, and our circles were tight. I had lived in Indiana for awhile at that point, but technically I was a student from New York. So, I naturally was adopted by the NY,LI,CT folks. Our little crew also had people from the Philippines, Greece and of course we readily adopted any pretty woman who came within our orbit: we were loud, boisterous and breathtakingly cocky which seemed to repel or attract our female counterparts in equal measure. I’ll let you do the sociology on that one. While a clique does not sound like a good thing, I don’t think I have ever had a more fun, crazy and diverse group of friends. My circle was a bit wider than most since I mixed more with undergraduates. I had to take advanced mathematics classes which put me into shared miseries and sometimes study groups with younger students. I also worked in the cafeteria line for our entire complex which was about 80% undergraduates and I played intercollegiate club lacrosse as one of only two grad students on the team. This also made my dating pool a bit wider, which was good, because dating someone you had to live in close proximity to was dicey if (and usually when) it didn’t work out.

While I look back fondly on those days, wistful implies a feeling of regret. I would have never wound up going to WrestleMania One at the Garden, or dancing all night at the local clubs in Muncie or meeting all those amazing characters. Not to mention that one of those undergraduates is still one of my dearest friends all these many years later. The regret? That I could have interacted SO MUCH MORE with all of these beautiful people from all over the world. A lot of the international students represented the best their countries had to offer and so they were amazingly smart and interesting. Even though I am sometimes quiet, people seem to want to talk to me. I remember getting the whole breakdown on Lesotho from a black African man, which was fascinating…especially since in 1984 Apartheid was still the law of the land in South Africa. I also had a Lebanese suite mate who was Muslim, and sympathized with the Palestinians which led to many fascinating debates and some learning about all the different religions in Lebanon. Druse anyone? As for the Egyptians? I have a long history with Egyptians and every one I knew loved a good argument, and sooner or later you would forget how the whole thing started and would end up roaring with laughter. The problem was I could have spent so much more time learning from people like this. Years later when I began to lead people from all over the world some of that interaction paid dividends and I approached things with that lesson in mind. Still the opportunities I left on the table feel huge in retrospect.

Again…a period of time compressed into a lifetime.

The thing about memories, is you choose which ones to focus on. As a species we seem wired to think of all the things that went wrong rather than the things that were amazing. If you took inventory, I think you would find many many more amazing things.

“Holidays must end as you know. 
All is memory taken home with me: 
the opera, the stolen tea, the sand drawing, the verging sea, all years ago.“

* “Verdi Cries” Music and Lyrics by Natalie Merchant.

This post is human authored.

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