Swimming through the bees

I remember hearing “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby”, the 8-minute-long song by the Counting Crows long before 1999 when the album was released (just looked it up). I associate “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby” with the spring and summer of 1995, a time of personal loss and grief, but also possibility and hope, when I was so lost and yet also so alive. Loneliness, weird stasis – almost like a plane hovering over the runway, smothering heat wave, lots of sex, burning nostalgia… yearning for the past, excited for the future, sad it all will end … I was SURE that “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby” was a big part of that whole time. But no. It came afterwards. Long afterwards.

I may be confusing it with the earlier album, which came out in 1993 – the one with “Anna Begins” on it, but it’s “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby” that I remember.

I guess that’s just how memory works. It melds together two intense times, or superimposes a soundtrack from a different era onto another time, because the mood is right. Or the music fits with the era because it either so reflects your own experience that you had had at that time, and you want to relive it, or shocks you out of certain moods, propelling you down a different path. For example, I do have some “get happy” songs. It is not always possible for me to get happy – nor do I always want to “get happy” (especially not now) – there is sadness too big to touch, but if I can sense a sadness approaching (of the vague self-pitying kind – not the acute immediate kind, which will not be stopped) … there are songs that can help me snap out of it. I’ve written posts before about how certain songs seem to actually contain memories – and so I need to be careful, sometimes, of what I listen to. Because I’m not always in the mood to be transported. It’ll be the strangest things, and sometimes the song, and my relationship to it, does change – but here’s an example. It’s not like I am transported to that specific time when I hear that song. I am transported. Here’s another example, a song that, to this day, has the potential to (literally) take my breath away. More here.

It is one of my favorite topics. Perhaps it’s because of acting and theatre – you get used to dealing in emotion, figuring out what works, what doesn’t … it’s like you have to build up your arsenal of weapons. “Watershed” by the Indigo Girls makes me cry, no matter how happy or contented I am when it comes on. It is a trigger. Not just because of the lyrics, but the sound, the chord progression, and also the memories the song itself contains. But I also am interested in memory itself, and how the brain latches onto things, and how even if it is not literally true, there is sometimes a deeper truth, not connected to facts or accurate timelines.

I know that “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby” came into my life because of my friends David and Maria, who love The Counting Crows (I do, too – but I had somehow missed owning this album). And now I don’t own ANY Counting Crows albums, because I just don’t really care about them anymore – but I sure as hell own “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby”. My music collection would never be complete without it. It’s a “go to” song, meaning: I’m a fantasist. I manage to pay my bills and clean my house and maintain relationships, but at heart, I prefer the dream to the reality. My fantasies are places I wallow in, languishing, I could spend hours there, and I do. These aren’t just sexual fantasies, although I have those too, of course. Sometimes they are “revenge fantasies”, where I “get” someone back, sometimes they are casual fantasies – chatting, my head in someone’s lap, comfort, peace (have to be careful about those) … sometimes they are wild and out there, involving home movies and me jumping on a trampoline in the middle of the desert (I love that one ). Music is attached to all of this. And nothing general: specific songs help me go to the specific fantasy. The “home movie-trampoline” song is “Holding my Breath” by Hello goodbye, for example.

Something I go through phases of listening to a song on eternal repeat (and when I say “eternal repeat” I mean that I drove for four hours yesterday listening only to “Now” by Everclear). Right now, a time when I need comfort and reminders of certain TYPES of emotions – other than loss and self-hatred and fear and disappointment – I have a couple of “go to” songs, and it’s one of the reasons why I can’t just randomly listen to music right now. I cannot be ambushed. Music also doesn’t hold my attention.

A lot of times I stay away from “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby” due to the associations I have (however incorrect), of a summer of baffled loss. It’s not something I choose to call upon. Like the song itself says:

And the price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings

But there is something transcendent in the song at times too, it feels like something in me rises up to meet it. “We drove out to the desert just to lie down beneath this bowl of stars …”

It’s eight minutes long. It appears to be repetitive (it is repetitive). But it transports.

I have never looked up the lyrics. I didn’t feel I needed to.

There was one of those lines that made me burn with a joy almost too sweet to bear: “So I throw my hand into the air and it swims in the bees…”

When I was heartsick and aching, that image – of running, and throwing my hand into the air, and having it “swim in the bees” – was strangely comforting – terrible actually – because wouldn’t it sting? But it reminded me of things, things I loved, things I was trying to stop myself from loving, things that could save me if I let them – joy, acceptance, gratitude … and it hurt. That line HURT. But I got something from it. It spoke to me. I remembered running through the fields with Michael, before he caught up to me and tackled me, I remembered running towards the surf on the last day of high school and Betsy jumping in, I remembered bopping around in my parents’ car with Mitchell on a summer night, going to Dairy Queen and listening to Barbra Streisand … freedom, and laughter and friendship … that is poignant now only because it is over.

For some reason today I Googled the lyrics.

I was shocked and saddened (at first) – after all these years – that the hand does not “swim through the bees”. It’s not bees at all. The hand swims “through the beams”. But this is a post about memory, which is notoriously faulty, first of all, but also notoriously more reliable than anything else.

Those lyrics (my lyrics, I mean) have connotations for me, connotations of joy and hope that felt so far away for me in that summer of 1995, and feel very far away from me right now.

It is hard to point at something in my life at this time and say, “There. There is the ‘substance of things hoped for.’ I can see it. I can feel it.” My hands grasp empty air.

It feels like a moral imperative for me to focus on being grateful right now … but it is also not so easy, and something I struggle with on a second-to-second basis, at times. I feel lost, grief-struck, frightened, and sometimes overwhelmingly sad. Entire days are lost.

But when I hear that bit of the song, once again, the images come … from years ago … as if on cue … running across some golden field, throwing my hand up in the air, and letting it swim through the bees. I can even feel the light touch of those bees on my hand … the slight sting … it doesn’t really hurt, it’s really just a pinprick… hot and sharp.

I’m rather surprised I can listen to this song right now, but I think I need those bees.

I’ve always known what I needed.

Well I woke up in mid-afternoon cause that’s when it all hurts the most
I dream I never know anyone at the party and I’m always the host
If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts
You can never escape, you can only move south down the coast

well, I am an idiot walking a tightrope of fortune and fame
I am an acrobat swinging trapezes through circles of flame
If you’ve never stared off in the distance, then your life is a shame
and though I’ll never forget your face,
sometimes i can’t remember my name

Hey Mrs. Potter don’t cry
Hey Mrs. Potter I know why but
Hey Mrs. Potter won’t you talk to me

Well, there’s a piece of Maria in every song that I sing
And the price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings
And there is always one last light to turn out and one last bell to ring
And the last one out of the circus has to lock up everything

Or the elephants will get out and forget to remember what you said
And the ghosts of the tilt-a-whirl will linger inside your head
And the ferris wheel junkies will spin there forever instead
When I see you a blanket of stars covers me in my bed

Hey Mrs. Potter don’t go
Hey Mrs. Potter I don’t know but
Hey Mrs. Potter won’t you talk to me

All the blue light reflections that color my mind when I sleep
And the lovesick rejections that accompany the company I keep
All the razor perceptions that cut just a little too deep
Hey I can bleed as well as anyone, but I need someone to help me sleep

So I throw my hand into the air and it swims in the beams
It’s just a brief interruption of the swirling dust sparkle jet stream
Well, I know I don’t know you and you’re probably not what you seem
But I’d sure like to find out
So why don’t you climb down off that movie screen

Hey Mrs. Potter don’t turn
Hey Mrs. Potter I burn for you
Hey Mrs. Potter won’t you talk to me

When the last king of Hollywood shatters his glass on the floor
and orders another
Well, I wonder what he did that for
That’s when I know that I have to get out cause I have been there before
So I gave up my seat at the bar and I head for the door

We drove out to the desert just to lie down beneath this bowl of stars
We stand up in the palace like it’s the last of the great pioneer town bars
We shout out these songs against the clang of electric guitars
You can see a million miles tonight
But you can’t get very far
Oh, you can see a million miles tonight
But you can’t get very far

Hey Mrs. Potter I won’t touch
Hey Mrs. Potter it’s not much but
Hey Mrs. Potter won’t you talk to me