jodyrathgeb

   A running joke in my college dorm was for someone to put a textbook on her head and announce, "I'm studying by osmosis."
   Well, maybe there was something in that. Maybe all my years of listening to Paul Simon, Stephen Sondheim and Jimmy Buffett taught me something, because I'm now finding my way as a songwriter.
   I can't write tunes. I don't play an instrument and wouldn't know a Major Seventh if it hit me upside the head. But I've always loved lyrics and words and can find a rhythm in them. Iambic pentameter? Yeah, I can do that.
   My first song, "Sand Fly Morning," began on a North Caicos morning when the sand flies were heavy. As I hid under my sheet, the words started coming together. "It's a sand fly morning; come back, breeze."
   With that as part of a refrain, I put together several verses. I did nothing with the song for a while, then last year asked songwriter Dave McKenney, whom I know through the Parrot Head Club of Richmond, if he'd be interested in putting it to music. He was, and next month will see the debut of the song at Ashland Coffee & Tea. I'm looking forward to hearing it.
   Island things are also featured in two more songs I've written, "Walking With My Potcake" and "No Fancy Breeds." I wrote the first in response to a call for lyrics from the Potcake Foundation here, which rescues island dogs and finds homes for them. Musician Lovey Forbes (pictured), my neighbor and husband of the organization's founder, would be putting together an album to benefit the potcakes.
   Lovey liked my words and told me, as we crossed ways at the ferry landing, that he'd already put it to music, so on this trip to the island I asked if I could hear the song. We arranged to get together in a few days, and he said, "Do you have any more potcake songs? I need more."
   The very next morning, I woke up with a line in my head: "I got a pot-licking, pot-bellied potcake." I set to writing a song that included a potcake, an island cat and a rooster.
   Lovey said it was easy to put the words to music. "I like how you write." Wow. What writer doesn't want to hear something like that?
    He introduced both songs yesterday at his weekly local gig, and he told me he's interested in any songs I do beyond the potcakes, too.
   Thrilled? Too weak of a word for how I feel. But it rhymes with "fulfilled."
   I guess I'm a songwriter now.

    Hurricane season, which officially begins on Saturday, has inspired a number of songs, many written by Jimmy Buffett and other Parrot Head favorites. Without even checking my CDs, I can name "Surfin' in a Hurricane," Sunny Jim's "Hurricane Party" and, of course, "Tryin' to Reason With Hurricane Season."
    The songs for "my" hurricane, though - that is, the music that brings back memories from the first one I experienced on North Caicos, Hurricane Irene in 2011 - are a bit different.
    First, there's the 1936 Matty Malneck song, "Goody Goody." Why? As Irene strengthened, a hurricane family gathered in my house: me, my Bahamian friend Aggie on a visit, and neighbor Addison, who thought it might comfort us to have a male around. While the electricity stayed on, we watched old movies. "Mrs. Henderson Presents" from 2005 was on when the power finally went out. "Goody Goody" was one of the last things we heard before the sound of relentless wind took over.
    "So you met someone who
    set you back on your heels,
    goody, goody!"
    In retrospect, it was appropriate, since hurricanes do set you back on your heels.
    We'd expected most of what happened, but not the endurance of the storm. When there was still wind and rain after a full 24 hours, Addison began to sing, "Goodnight Irene." Yup. Perfect, even though I was surprised that he knew the song.
    Then there was the aftermath. Although we, and Aloe House, had come through safely, island life in general was disrupted. And Tom was due to arrive in Provo! His first flight, the day after the storm, was canceled because of the airport closure. The next day was a mishmash of conflicting information and shaky communications. Would he make it? Would I be able to get to Provo to greet his flight? Would I be able to get from the ferry dock to the airport, given the reports we were getting about flooding on Provo? As I kept trying to get online and figure out which local phone service was working, I was getting more and more frustrated. Suddenly Aggie slapped a drink in front of me and began singing Bob Marley's "Every little thing's gonna be all right."
    It was, and the song still resonates as a buffer in a difficult time.
    I'm pretty sure that most people associate major life events with songs. I remember working with a compositor at a newspaper in Pennsylvania who would mist over at the first few notes of Glenn Miller's "In the Mood." It was, for him, both a war song and a courtship song.
    But the association must be organic. Tom and I were both dismayed that for "our" war - the first Gulf, when we were waking at 2 a.m. so Tom could do his grisly-necessary job of making sure that guys on the flight line to Kuwait had made and signed a will - the songs forced upon us were Lee Greenwood's "Proud to be an American" (I wasn't, when this all seemed to be about oil) and "Wind Beneath My Wings" (which is aerodynamically incorrect). So I had no war music. Just the question, "What are you doing here?" when I'd appear at work at 4 a.m., too awake to go back to sleep. Even newspaper folks were kept out of the loop of what was really happening. And I guess that's a song in its own right.
    So. Hurricane season? It's going to happen, no matter how much we worry or prepare. What might be new is what's on the soundtrack.

    Back in high school, I started keeping a notebook of quotes I liked, gathering them from the literature we studied in classes, pop song lyrics and even from my teachers. I called the collection "Freaked-out Amoebas," the title coming from a description my senior English teacher made of something I can't remember. I just liked the phrase.
    I still have the notebook. It's at Aloe House, not here in Richmond, following a Murphy's Law corollary for people who live in two places that says everything you want is at the other house. I'd love to look at it now, coming up on my 60th birthday, but I can't. So instead here's the beginning of a new version, more than 40 years on.
    Some of these quotes were in the original FOA. Others just fit into where I am today. These are more pop-song than literary, but perhaps as we grow older it's easier to remember our cultural immersion rather than our education.
    Anyway, some thoughts for the ages and the aging:
From Robert Herrick-
    Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
    Old Time is still a-flying:
    And this same flower that smiles to-day
    To-morrow will be dying.
From Shakespeare-
    And if I laugh at any mortal thing
    'Tis that I may not weep.
From Billy Joel-
    But you know that when the truth is told
    You can get what you want or you can just get old.
    You're gonna kick off before you even get halfway through.
    Ooo, when will you realize
    Vienna waits for you?
From Paul Simon-
    So I'll continue to continue to pretend
    My life will never end
    And flowers never bend with the rainfall.
and-
    Sail on, Silvergirl.
    Sail on by.
    Your time has come to shine,
    All your dreams are on their way.
    See how they shine.
    Oh, if you need a friend
    I'm sailing right behind.
    Like a bridge over troubled water
    I will ease your mind.
And, of course, from Jimmy Buffett-
    And if it doesn't work out there'll never be any doubt
    That the pleasure was worth all the pain.
And finally-
    If it suddenly ended tomorrow
    I could somehow adjust to the fall.
    Good times and riches and son of a bitches
    I've seen more than I can recall.
    These changes in latitude, changes in attitude
    Nothing remains quite the same.
    Through all of the islands and all of the highlands
    If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane.

    Here's my grand opus from five weeks on North Caicos: some song lyrics in search of a tune.
SAND FLY MORNING
Breeze was my honey,
Breeze was my friend.
But she just up and left me -
Gone with the wind.
Well, she didn't leave me lonely:
I woke up to find
I've got close encounters
of the sand fly kind.

(Refrain)
I'm being bitten all over by these tiny fleas.
It's a sand fly morning. Come back, Breeze.

They call them no-see-ums,
they call them sand flies,
and they've a mighty big bite
for their miniscule size.
They're just tiny speckles
on my arms, legs and neck.
But they're all jaw and tooth
and they hurt like heck.

(Repeat refrain.)

I'm under the covers
and I can't breathe.
But if I toss this sheet off,
I'll be under siege.
They're out there, they're waiting
for my tender skin.
So I'll suffocate here.
I won't let them win.

(Repeat refrain.
Repeat first verse.
Repeat refrain.)

Copyright Jody Rathgeb, 2012