Saturday Evening Prayer Meeting

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[CONCEPTUAL CONTINUITY]

If I posted this previously, then I beg a thousand pardons.



My memory of this song is tied up tight with a single summer day, its weather in particular. Dense overcast, thick air that was almost body temperature; every indication that heavy rain would be encroaching any moment. When Dex Card cued up the song on an otherwise-unmarked-in-my-memory July mid-afternoon, I was undoubtedly "grounded" for some random affront to my mother's authority, and so feeling trapped on the premises. Even though she was at work, the bluff  kept me to within a line of sight on Highland Ave.

I'd surely heard the song before, but the vibe on that day seemed fraught with portent, like the impending storm. The string dissonances in the opening bars are probably not any more avant garde than "Chopsticks," but when the girls started singing, there was something pinched-up about the sound that smelled like trouble to my little shell-like ears. They sounded upset, smoldering in rage even. About to make with the tears just like the sky. I don't remember if it actually rained that afternoon.

Today the weather seemed identical, and so I put on my "7th" iPod playlist while puttering in the weeds and dirt, wondering if the experience might replicate. It did. Mist began condensing out of the clouds about an hour ago. But this time the sky let loose for real while I was composing the previous paragraph. And there's no more sunlight than if it were 8:45 pm (instead of 5:15).

I'm not offering any particular point except that multisensory memory can transport a person out of his current skin, and that in turn can be stimulated by technology with the aim of excavating a stratum of past experience. Why not? Did you do anything more profound than that this afternoon?

Sweet Talkin' Guy, The Chiffons (1966), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.