Open Your Heart

While driving yesterday "Open Your Heart" came on the radio. From the opening "A Watch out!" (or whatever those three syllables are) I knew exactly what was to come. The song returned me to Madonna; True Blue was the first Madonna album I ever bought. I was living in Cambridge with my friend A. The apartment, a large one bedroom with a study, is now a condominium. A bookstore by the name of Foozles sat across the street. Next door were a small paper store and an Italian takeout.

I spent that autumn and winter trying to decide what I wanted to do. I had started a job at Boston University typesetting course catalogs. It was my first "real" job. I worked with a great group of people but the work was unsatisfying. My co-workers were mainly working to take free classes. One owned almost every Ella Fitzerald album ever made; another every Tom Waits album. I was stuck in the 80s. At night I would rent 80s movies and listen to the Pretty in Pink soundtrack again and again. It was also that year that I saw The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Our friend P. had brought it over, and then apologized. He had assured us it was a "taut little thriller," but in the end it served more as a cultural touchstone (years later I would know exactly what the Beastie Boys meant when referencing it in the lyrics to "Sure Shot") than a great film. The next time P. visited he introduced us to John Woo's The Killer. At its conclusion, our mouths were agape. Action films would never be the same.

I'm somewhat caught between things again this winter, although I haven't yet found the right soundtrack. But maybe it's in retrospect that you associate songs or events to a particular time. Anyway, I seem to take songs out of context, revisiting a golden past long after its zenith. Or maybe that was then, this is now. Happy Valentine's. Happy Happy Valentine's. Posted by eku at February 14, 2004 10:50 AM