Heartaches

Heartaches
8/19/08

I come back from the bar drunk and all I want to hear is Heartaches. It’s not really out of loneliness, I’m sure there’s a little of that there, but it’s the desire to go somewhere old and familiar. I like to tell people, when they ask, that my oldest musical memory is listening to Patsy Cline in my parents car as a kid. There’s a certain instinct surrounding that. Like whenever I’m at the bar and Patsy Cline comes on the jukebox and I can immediately identify the song as “I Fall to Pieces,” “Crazy,” or “She’s Got You.” Just the timbre of her voice is all it takes. I can pick it up from meters away. It’s like whenever you see a TV chef eating lunch in some exotic location and the way he closes his eyes when he’s tasting something. Something that reminds him of home, something that takes him back to a much earlier time in his life and he savors it because those times were perfect. The times when you didn’t have to worry about anything. When mom cooked you great food, when your parents took you everywhere and you looked forward to summer vacation because all you would ever do was go to the pool, play video games or have sleepovers where you played video games.
Patsy Cline is my perfect woman. I hear her voice and I literally fall to pieces and then make a pun on the name of the song. It’s just what happens. I think it’s because she completely transcends time. Every song on Heartaches relates to my life right now, and Patsy Cline died in a plane crash in 1963. So, in my head since I was five years old I’ve built up this perfect woman. It’s been a long process. She was a handsome woman, I wouldn’t say she was pretty but I think she was gorgeous in the way that any woman that could drink me under the table is gorgeous. The way a woman could go out with the boys and make them look like fools, that’s something that appeals to me. There’s nothing more attractive to me than a woman who can make me look like an idiot. Who can completely usurp my masculinity and make me feel like an idiot for ever trying to “be a man.”
It’s her voice, too. Something about that voice that commands your complete attention. The way I can’t not sit with my eyes closed, bobbing my head softly, whenever I hear that twangy lap-steel intro to “Walkin’ After Midnight” in the bar and her voice comes in like benevolent invading forces. After that it’s listening to every word she says. “I go out walkin’ after midnight, out in the starlight, just hoping you may be somewhere a-walkin’ after midnight searching for me.” I can’t think of a single one of her songs that doesn’t capture loneliness in its perfect form. “She’s Got You” is one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard, but regardless of that I can tell that Patsy’s gonna move on, It just kind of sucks at the moment. “I’ve got the records that we used to share/ And they still sound the same, as when you were here/ The only thing different, the only thing new/ I’ve got the records, she’s got you.” “I’ve got your memory, or has it got me?” Even if she didn’t write the song, she sings it in such a way that she has lived that. It’s the kind of song that pop singers have been trying to replicate for years and have never been able to match.
I used to like to fault my parents for never having a great record collection. The only records that I ever stole from them were a beat up copy of the Beatles’ Revolver and a beat up copy of the Beach Boys Endless Summer compilation. But now I’m realizing that the only record that really mattered was their cassette copy of Patsy Cline’s Heartaches. The one we’d listen to in the car all the time, and when we weren’t listening to that we were listening to Oldies 95. They did more for my musical evolution than I ever give them credit for. My affinity for short songs and indie-pop comes from that. A couple of years ago I learned to embrace that, and realized the profound impact that my parents had on my appreciation for music today. I guess I could have had parents that had a bunch of old punk records, but it was much more interesting to find punk on my own, and I think it made me a better person. Today you see thirteen-year-old kids touting Neutral Milk Hotel as their favorite band and I want to yell at them. I want to say, “You never had to work for that! You didn’t have to be a confused kid watching MTV! You didn’t have to go through Limp Bizkit and Korn and the myriad bands that came out in the late 90s that made ‘cool’ music.” I feel like bad music is important, but it’s something you have to find on your own and ultimately it leads to a more well rounded music kid. I step back and look at the trajectory my music tastes have taken over twenty-two years and after laughing, I plot every point out on a little graph in my head. Where I started is ultimately where I finished, and I only say that because I feel like at 21 I hit my peak. I don’t think I’m going to be buying any Phil Collins or Sting records as I get older, and I feel like the music I like now is going to be the music I like forever. I don’t think my tastes will get older, and maybe that’s a problem for my kids. Regardless, I’ll still make my kids listen to Patsy Cline and oldies because I still think it’s the most perfect music ever made. Things change with the times, but the fifties and sixties were it, I think. Anyone who tries to make a perfect pop song is just trying to make something as good as “Walkin’ After Midnight,” and it’s something no one can ever do.
Even though Heartaches is only a ten-song compilation of some of Patsy’s best songs, and even though it leaves out some really amazing ones, it’s still one of my favorite records because it has history. It’s like my grandma’s fried chicken or something. Better yet, it’s like the time my aunt Marie made my grandma’s fried chicken for me about seven years after she died and it took me back to being in elementary school when my dad would drive us to Wellsville and grandma would cook us fried chicken and ask my brother, sister, and I how we were doing in school and the way she would light up when she found out we were all getting good grades. That’s the kind of happiness I get from Patsy Cline now. It’s that feeling of home that everyone is always chasing after, probably the most overused pursuit in literature, song and film (I’m thinking Citizen Kane, here). But it’s overused for a reason, because life seems to be about the pursuit of comfort, and when are you more comfortable than when you are at home. When mom is cooking you food and taking care of you. It’s the only place you are completely safe, everything else is a wild card. So when I hear Patsy Cline at the bar I literally fall to pieces and tell everyone around me that I am doing so. I tell them to not talk to me until the song finishes and then I take a deep breath and try to re-involve myself. I just can’t talk during a Patsy Cline song unless I am talking about how much I love Patsy Cline and how important she is to me, but usually I try to stay still and quietly mouth the words to myself. So, if you ever see someone at the bar sitting out back and that person is doing what I just mentioned and Patsy Cline is playing, it’s probably me. If you try to talk to me, I’ll just tell you to listen, and hopefully you can see the beauty in “Heartaches.” You can listen to the words and you can tell that she means every single one and you know that she is hitting on these absolute truths in life that can rarely ever be properly communicated. “I should be happy with someone new, but my heart aches for you.” It’s the perfect sadness, but you know it’s true and you know everyone’s been there. Like most music that lasts, Patsy Cline is universal. It’s music that transcends time, decades and generations. She sings songs for the human experience, and that’s one of the main reasons I’m going to be listening to and identifying with Patsy Cline until the day that I die because I know I could never be completely happy. No one can, because even if you are happy you can listen to these songs and they will take you back to the times when you felt just like “Crazy,” and you can appreciate those times because they have shaped you as a person. I honestly feel that every single person on this planet has to have said, “I’m crazy for loving you” at least once, whether out loud or in their head, in their life to be a real person. Because everyone deals with that shit, and even if you get over it (which you eventually do), you still have that moment where you said that and it’s still completely true.