Before I went radio-only in the kitchen I used to do vinyl while I cooked or did dishes. I have some great records, but for whatever reason, more often than not it was Anne Murray’s Greatest Hits that found it’s way into my tray-often on flip flop flip flop repeat. She has a few stinkers to be sure, but enough of what my brain considers ‘bangers’ to keep me locked in.
It’s a couple things. Anne herself is the type of woman I find mateable. Warm, gentle, giving-much like myself, and much UNlike everyone I’ve dated in the last decade or two.
More than that, it’s her era, and what that era triggers in me. Stark imagery from the deepest reaches of the early 80s. It was the kind of music that was on in the kitchen. Back when I was the only kid to young parents in an old house in desperate need of remodeling. 40s yellow paint. Old cabinets. All yellow, for its 50th coat. Blinding light from the window in wet rays with green and orange branches visible behind the beams of light if you squint. That sound of cooking from far above.
I have this trick, where anytime I cultivate or chance into specific places, or aesthetics, and those places mirror places in my memory to a sufficient degree, that I can bridge the present with that memory very deeply and experience a unique form of travel.
The other day I was dewinterizing a cottage, staring at an old Moen crystal sink handle and the little plants and decorations around it in the morning light through the side window, and suddenly I could smell myrtle and periwinkle and ozone and my grandpa’s shirts, and I could hear him doing things in the other room and I was looking forward to washing my hands and heading back into the living room to crack walnuts and listen to him talk.
And as long as I wanted to stare at that little scene I could stay in that feeling, and even after moving on and going about my business it was like I was just there. It always makes me smile. Always comes with this sense of connection and renewal.
I think Anne Murray is a gateway for me into an older feeling. The feeling of being virgin to a beautiful world being run by people almost infinitely older and wiser and more established in it than I. Everything Que Sera, Sera. It makes me feel comforted and looked after and like I don’t have any responsibilities or things to account for- but also curious and exploratory and excited for all the discovery to be had across the beautiful new world.
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