Every Song in the World for Me
Here’s one way to tell if you’re obsessed with someone: You want to push them down the stairs just so you can fall on top of them. Here’s another way to tell if you’re obsessed with someone: You go ape shit at meeting someone who is 2 degrees away from your object of obsession. Here’s yet another way to tell if you’re obsessed with someone: You forego a whole night’s worth of sleep to put together a 40 minute video/photo montage of them. Then you spend the next day watching aforementioned montage again and again and again. You change out of your pajamas at 2 in the afternoon, you shower, you go out, you see your friends, and you try to hide the fact that you’ve gone mad. But it’s just too easy to tell when someone’s obsessed. What is hard to do, is to take her seriously. Especially if the current manifestation of every obsessive bone in her body lives 10, 000 miles away from where she does, has never been to this side of the world, has never met her and she has never met him (though when someone points this out to her, she breaks into that awful Savage Garden song that she doesn’t even like that goes something like –I knew I love you before I met you…………) unless you count the times she watched him on TV, “Googled” him online or played his songs on the stereo. You think she’ll get over it in a week or two, just like how she got over that blonde guy from One Tree Hill whom she now denies all knowledge of – One Tree-What? Who’s Chad? Please, I don’t watch teen soaps……
You think, it’s alright, she’ll calm down, she’ll get over him when she finally manages to have some semblance of a real love life. Then you wonder if that’s ever going to happen. At the rate she’s going, the prognosis is so bad; she might as well have cancer. She doesn’t want a real love life. If what the world has to offer her currently is as real as it gets it then thanks but no thanks; she doesn’t want it.
See, it has been three months and my preoccupation with a certain new lead singer of an old band doesn’t seem to be fading. At all. It’s gone from barely-there to the only thing that’s there.
I am no longer myself. There have been days, long before this one in which I wasn’t completely myself, days when I was almost myself but not quite, days I was barely myself. But never before have I been completely unlike myself, until now, that is.
At this point, you, stranger, and you, friend, are more like myself than I have been lately.
Do you get what I’m saying?
In my place, is a Maryam-shaped message board-participating, video & music-downloading, JD worshipping drone. The drone opens its mouth and all that comes out is: JDJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJD and friends of Maryam, they want to hit this drone with a 2 by 4, but before they can, their heads explode from having to hear this drone go: JDJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJD.
Here’s another way to tell if you’re obsessed with someone: All your friends have exploded heads.
And another way: You memorize every quotable thing he has ever said. And to you, everything he says is quotable. “Pass the butter knife” is quotable. You know all his quotes like you know your full name. Except lately, you can’t seem to remember your full name. But you know his. And every stage name he has ever used in his career. You’ve forgotten how to use words yourself, but you know how he uses his.
And another way, this is a really good way: You think every song you hear is about him. Or you being obsessed with him. Or him being completely in love with you (Even though he isn’t. He can’t be. He doesn’t know you but you’re convinced that if he did, he would be. All it takes is a chance for you to say “Hello”. You think you’ll have him at “hello”. You’ll have him at “hello”.) Or him not being in love with you at all. Every song. Every song – the ones you love, and even the ones you hate.
You hear Superstar by The Carpenters (embarrassingly enough, you like that song) – and you think Karen Carpenter is killing you softly with this song (Killing Me Softly, she sang that too didn’t she) – especially the part where she sings about falling in love with this musician before the second show, something about – Long ago, and though so far away, I fell in love with you, before the second show- and the part where she goes: Your guitar, it sounds so sweet and clear, but you’re not really here, it’s just the radio…and you really start to tear (even though you’re not the teary-type) at the part where she belts: DON’T YOU REMEMBER YOU TOLD ME YOU LOVE ME, BABY, YOU SAID YOU BE COMING BACK THIS WAY AGAIN, BABY, BABY, BABY, BABY, OH, BABY, I LOVE YOU, I REALLY DO ……….
You hear your friend singing Whitney Houston’s Saving All My Love for You (you absolutely hate the song) and you start to wail and weep and sob. You’re saving all your love for your Object of Obsession. You go Whitney, you go girl, except why did you save all your love for Bobby Brown, of all people?
You sing Bonnie Raitt’s I Can’t Make You Love Me - it’s bad enough that even on a good voice day, you can’t hit any of the notes, you start to break down right before the powerful chorus – I can’t make you love me if you don’t, You can’t make your heart feel something it won’t, here in the dark, these final hours, I will lay down my heart and I feel the power but you won’t, no, you won’t – because deep down inside, you know that you won’t have him at “hello”, deep down, you know you’ll never have him (reality check, double check.) And the part where the song goes: Morning will come and I’ll do what’s right – you know “what’s right” means getting over your obsession.
You hear Eric Clapton’s Layla (you absolutely love the song) and though you essentially know that Eric Clapton wrote the song for the woman he was in love with back then, Patti Boyd (the “Layla” in the song, was then married to Beatle, George Harrison –wow, fun fact), some part of you believes that you wrote the song for the object of your obsession and you let Eric Clapton sing it (he begged) and replace “JD” with “Layla” instead.
What do you do when u get lonely, nobody’s waiting by your side, you can run, you’ve been hiding much too long, you know it’s just your foolish pride, Layla, you got me on my knees, begging darling please, Layla, darling won’t you ease my worried mind…………………. Like a fool, I fell in love with you……………fix this messed up situation, before I finally go insane……
You hear Joan Jett’s I Hate Myself for Loving You and you know you hate yourself for loving him in that so off-the-deep-end manner you do. You look at the phone, and you swear you hear him telepathically singing to you his own rendition of Blondie’s Call Me (yes, you enjoy Blondie songs) – Call me, my something, Call me, call me any, anytime, Call me, something something, you can call me any day or night… cover me with kisses, baby, cover me with love, roll me in designer sheets, baby, I can never get enough ……You see a car pass by and you want to call your Object of Obsession up and sing for him your version of Vehicle by Ides of March – I’m your vehicle baby, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go…………I love you, I need you, want you, I got to, got to have your child, great God in Heaven you know I love you…..
You hear PJ Harvey’s This Is Love – I can’t believe love’s so complex, when I just want to sit here and watch you undress – and you think “Word, sister”, you just want to sit around and watch your object of obsession undress (so far, you haven’t been given the chance.)
Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Fortunate Son reminds you of him, if only because the root word for the first word in the song title is similar to his mother’s maiden name.
You hear Nick Cave’s Easy Money and it reminds you of your object of obsession because O.O.O once did an awesome cover of Pink Floyd’s Money (Easy Money = Money, geddit? Love those songs).
Of course, every single song you have ever heard your object of obsession perform, reminds you of him. Of course.
You love the Rolling Stones. And he must love them too since he wants two of their songs played at his funeral. You love the Stones, he loves the Stones, according to fuzzy logic, this surely means that he loves you.
You hear a deranged-sounding oldie tune; the one about how much is that doggy in the window, *woof* *woof*, the one with the waggly tail and you think of him – there’s something about the way he looks sometimes that reminds you of a little “doggy”, a puppy. Also, you entertain thoughts about his “waggly tail”. ALOT.
You tell a friend, “Right now, he (your object of obsession) is every song in the world for me. Every song in the world for me.” And you wish you hadn’t because she’s laughing at you so hard for your absolute corny-ness. You explain to your friend that it’s a twist from a line from that Trail of Dead song which goes: I’m afraid, you’ll never be, every song in the world for me. Your friend still thinks you’re corny, that you’ve gone so far into the corn field, you ain’t ever coming back. Toto, we ain’t ever leaving Kansas no more. Keep in mind that this particular friend of yours thinks she has been married to Mr. John my-songs-are-so-boring-and-I’m-quite-possibly-the-sexual-offender-next-door Mayer for the past three years. Keep in mind that this friend of yours is a chick who’s actually in love with the corn dog cheese bucket that wrote Your Body is a Wonderland. Keep in mind that this friend of yours, is arguably, the Crown Princess of Corn for the Asia-Pacific region. And she’s telling you that you’re being corny. You must need help.
Oh, when I say ‘you’, I meant ‘I’. As in I need help. I’m being corny. I’m obsessed. It’s just easier to discuss the more pathetic aspects of your being in the second/ third person. Detachment neutralizes embarrassment.
But then,
This blog, this blog is my atonement. It’s the scarlet letter for the 21st century. ‘O’ for obsession.
I tell my friend that this obsession, it’s not without benefits. It has helped me rediscover my love for music. I might be obsessed with JD but I realize what I’m honestly, truly and plainly in love with is music.
When I grow up, if I ever do, I want to be a song.
Not a rock star, but a song.
Like “Layla”, like “Angie”, like “Roxanne”, like “Sarah”, like “Mandy”. Okay, maybe just “Layla”. Wasn’t Roxanne about a hooker? And Mandy, oh god, I hate Barry Manilow, and someone told me “Mandy” was actually about his dog.
When I grow up, I want to be a song.
Every song in the world for me. Every song in the world to somebody. And oh, nothing that Barry Manilow would sing.
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Another friend asked me the other day, what it would take for me to fall for a guy in “real” life for a change.
Inspiration, I answered.
Inspiration for what, the friend asked.
I’ll know when it comes. Till then, I’m waiting to inspire. But most of all, I’m waiting to be inspired. I’m waiting for someone that inspires me.
And it would help greatly if he’s hot.
