I've always felt behind and unknowledgeable about good old American classics like the Beatles, Beach Boys, Bee Gees. There were so many times oldies came on the radio or in conversation, everyone singing along and having a good time, deep in a happy kind of collective hypnosis, a shared memory like a really great party I missed out on because I was too nervous to go. These situations usually happened on long car rides, trying to find working radio stations in the middle of highways or cow town, or in a group of people I recently met, other summer interns or college kids.
I could only smile along and tilt my head to the music, but that only went so far. No one really noticed or cared - it wasn't a big deal. But for this I blamed my parents because of A) being Asian and B) not being music people. How I really wanted them to have passed down that pop music literacy, that easy way to be part of a conversation, especially with people I didn't know well. It makes sense since it wasn't in my parents' everyday lifestyle. They didn't even listen to Chinese music. And yet I'm always caught off guard when my mom mentions this or that Carpenters song, their tragic story, or my dad's early love for the Bee Gees. Why does it always surprise us when our parents know something we don't, loved something we couldn't have had knowledge of? That surprise is consistent and jarring.
There were a total of 3 cds that I remember having in our house when I was little: Simon and Garfunkel ("Bridge Over Troubled Water," "Mrs. Robinson," "The Sound of Silence"), John Denver's Greatest Hits ("Leaving on a Jet Plane"), and the Lion King soundtrack. I remember sitting on the dining room floor listening to those cds over and over, back to front, those afternoons with a lot of sunlight, no end of any kind in sight. Trying to find a comfortable position on the hardwood floor. Looking at the clouds romantically because I knew people did that in books. I can't remember any time constraints, no chores or even my mom looking in. Where was my brother when I was doing all this? In the car we'd listen to a cassette of Joni Eareckson Tada's Spirit Wings, whose side B was a male singer with an extremely deep voice, a really foreign concept for me at the time. More prominent in this memory than anything else is my dad singing along, like the two men knew each other and were singing a duet.
Later on, our family collection would grow to include Charlotte Church and Josh Groban, and a few other cds bought as easy Christmas presents for each other, but were rarely listened to. Other Disney soundtracks and WOW praise & worship cds. I moved onto Oasis' (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, an album introduced to my brother by my older cousin. My favorite song of the album would change, mostly "Don't Look Back in Anger" but sometimes "Champagne Supernova," the sloshy feeling of its 30 second intro and the small rebellion of listening to the lyrics, "Where were you while we were getting high?" I didn't want my parents to know about this. It was a slight dip in temperature, a feeling of separation like a hairline fracture I wouldn't notice until later.
I felt like I was really coming along in life when I started listening to music no one in my family had loved first. I could say it was Z104 that did it, listening faithfully to the top 40 countdown, or the fact that I was in 6th grade, older and more mature. But it was probably just that I needed a boy to like, and I found Justin Timberlake and 'Nsync. It was a nice space to inhabit, the inside of bubblegum, which grows as long as you have breath and bursts suddenly. It isn't meant to be substantial, but felt like it at the time, its pink insides like mine, walls expanding.
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