Osler's Razor

We all remember the songs our parents loved. They were there in the background, maybe coming up from the basement late at night or in the living room before dinner. There are some songs that even now don't sound right unless they are coming out of the big box speakers my Dad built.

My parents had good taste in music, and a broad range of affections, so I grew up with both the Beatles and Bill Monroe, Ella Fitzgerald and John Lee Hooker. More than anything, though, the music that marked my childhood, that I remember best, are the songs of a man named Harry Nilsson. He was a friend of John Lennon and a troubled soul, a brilliant musician who did not fit into any of the musical categories or trends of the time. People may remember his song Everybody's Talkin', from the film Midnight Cowboy, or maybe his theme song from the Bill Bixby tv show The Courtship of Eddie's Father. Nilsson had a warm, wistful voice and way of emotionalizing even small things like a child's desk.

I keep thinking that those songs will fade in my mind, the way I have forgotten who lived two doors down or what my hockey teams were called. But songs aren't facts. Songs are blood cells that circulate through the body, forever, ready to rise up and take over your thoughts when a melody emerges or perhaps you smell the scent of fresh bread or mown grass. Each love has a song, at least one, and the song is there long after the love in many cases, so that opening notes will make an older woman squeeze her thumb and finger together so as not to let on to others the place her mind has gone.

So I haven't gotten rid of Nilsson. I probably wrote the only law review article ever structured around Nillson's work, in fact.

Since I can't get rid of them, I have begun listening, really listening, to those songs again. Most of them are profoundly sad. They are about what is missing in a life, be it peace within or a person deeply loved. Though I am a profoundly happy person, I suppose that Nilsson is my equipoise; as happy as I may be with where I am or what I see, there will always be those holes, small or large, and those songs that drifted up from the basement on a snowy night as I did homework on a blue wooden desk still define that part of me-- a part I would rather not see or feel, but will be there nonetheless.

Not so long ago, I was traveling out of town. The journey was much worse than I had expected, and I had that weariness of soul and body that can only come when travel intersects with disappointment. I walked into my room, threw my bag by the door, and sat on the edge of the bed for a minute. It was very quiet right then, and I usually like quiet, but I wanted a little sound, so I turned on the radio and there was his voice. I knew all the words, so I sang along, every bit, and when it was over I turned the radio off because it had done everything a radio is capable of-- delivered a moment of connection, of deep emotion and heart. I kicked off my shoes and laid down, a little more complete. My blood was still my blood.

Sing it, Harry: