I knew she would. Complete with personal recollections that convey the charm of her email correspondence. Do yourselves a favor and listen to as much of her list as you can. In some ways it’s a window on a brighter world than our own.

*************************

I feel just as I do when someone (my husband usually, bless his heart) says to our dinner guests “Oh wait until you hear Barbara tell the hilarious story of what happened to her at the supermarket yesterday. You’ll laugh yourself sick. Go ahead and tell, ‘em, Barbara.” And of course I know that the event was only mildly amusing and may bring at best a slight smile to the face of the charitable, but now I must tell it nonetheless because of the build up.

So thanks a whole bunch, RL. Listen, dear readers, Robert is encouraging me because I wrote him a personal note saying I could not participate. I’m a generation or two ahead of most of you here, I don’t have much of an ear for music (to have me sing Happy Birthday to you is no kindness, believe me) and I completely missed the rock and roll era, the heavy metal era, and really am not even sure what those things even mean. I was pregnant or lactating throughout the 60s, raising kids in the 70s, and working and going to school and rushing home to keep a household together on my own after that. If you put a gun to my head I would be unable to name anything by the Rolling Stones, or Pink Floyd, or the Grateful Dead (in fact I’m rather proud that I can recite those three). I’ve read through all of the lists of favorites submitted so far and out of each hundred I may recognize five to 10. If I get lucky.

So basically I have nothing to say, so quit now is my advice. If you read on, know that I didn’t even try to come up with 100 cause I would have had to fake a lot of stuff, and that everything I did choose is entirely pedestrian — exactly what you’d expect from a great grandmother. My apologies, RL. Will you still respect me in the morning?
– – –
Thanks for the Memory – Bob Hope (Wonderful tune that’s been performed better by others, but it will always belong to Bob.) I couldn’t sing then, either, but at seven or so I would recite endlessly for myself all the words to Thanks for the Memory, which I had learned from reading our neighbor’s “Hit Parade” magazine.

Bye-Bye Blackbird – Ella Fitzgerald now, but what I listened to as a child was a scratchy old recording by Gene Austin, who wrote the song, I believe.

It Might as well Be Spring – From the first movie I can remember seeing, probably in 1945. I thought it was the most wonderful music I had ever heard and for months I studied my 10 year old face in the mirror, hoping there was a remote possibility I would grow up to look exactly like Jeanne Crain, who sang it in the film. I didn’t.)

Paper Doll – Mills Brothers. My parents loved the Mills Bros. and whenever the group made an appearance within two states’ distance of us, they’d pile my little sister and me in our ’36 Packard and we’d go to see them and sleep in the car afterward. Oh how my mom and dad loved to dance to Paper Doll — a “jilted” song that nonetheless made them (and now me) feel tremendously happy.

Sentimental Journey – Doris Day and Les Brown

High school and college – You Belong to Me – Jo Stafford; Wheel of Fortune – Kay Starr; How High the Moon – Les Paul and Mary Ford; My Funny Valentine – Anita O’Day; Fever – Peggy Lee; I Get Along Without You Very Well – Chet Baker. . .

And too many other favorites to list (or even remember). Those years (1949 – 1958) were at the end of the Big Band/Swing era and it astounds me now to recall how a carload of us teens (mainly) could drive 30 or 40 miles on a Saturday night to the closest “urban” farmer town in Minnesota, (with a population of about 30,000 or so) and dance to all the big names. Among those I saw were Gene Krupa, Billy May, the Dorseys, Harry James, Les Brown, Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. I didn’t think about it at the time, but what a terrible life those musicians must have had on the road in those days, being dragged in a bus from one tiny remote burg to another to play in dance halls for maybe 150 acne-faced, stompin’ farm kids. How lucky I was to be a part of that, facial blemishes, ugly clothes and all.

Later and a sprinkling of miscellaneous favorites. . .

When the World was Young – Frank Sinatra
The Way you Look Tonight – Perry Como
What a Wonderful World – Louis Armstrong, of course (saw him perform at the Brussel’s World’s Fair in 1958, lucky me . Was on my way to India to live for a year, not as a hipster following my guru — I was very conventional even then — but as a bride accompanying her husband who had work there).
Here Comes the Sun – Nina Simone
Stella by Starlight – Charlie Parker
Georgia on My Mind – Ray Charles
But Beautiful – Shirley Horn
MacArthur Park – Richard Harris (go ahead and mock me; I think I can handle it! I was always a little in love with Richard Harris, an attraction beyond explanation).
Cecelia – Simon & Garfunkel (still laugh every time I listen to its lyrics)
Hallelujah – Jeff Buckley
Walking in Memphis – Marc Cohn
Je Voudrais la Connaitre – Patricia Kaas
Where Do you Go, My Lovely – Peter Sarstedt
Somewhere Over the Rainbow – Bruddah Iz (Israel Kamakawiwo’ole)
Ku’u Ipo I Ka He’e Pu’e One – Brothers Cazimero I was at the Honolulu Shell the night this recording was made. The falsetto should give you chicken skin! Does me, but then I love Hawaiian falsetto (http://alohayou.com/2009/09/kuu_ipo_i_ka_hee_pue_one/

Orff – Carmina Burana (the recording I have is the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal)
Palestrina – Missa Brevis – The Tallis Scholars
Thomas Tallis – Spem in alium – The Tallis Scholars
*Gyorgy Cziffra plays Chopin and Liszt (from the Great Pianists of the 20th Century series)
Elgar – Violin Concerto – Nigel Kennedy and the London Philharmonic
Bach – Concertos for Harpsichord and Strings – Trevor Pinnock
Bach – Goldberg Variations – Glenn Gould (both early and late recordings)
Bach – Goldberg Variations – Daniel Barenboim
Bach – Concerto for Two Violins – Ann-Sophie Mutter and Salvatore Accardo

* purchased upon a recommendation from Jay Nordlinger. I threw it in just so I could name drop J.N., and let everyone here know I had the bravery to discuss music with him. Okay, it was only for a few minutes on a NR cruise, but still. . .

When we got him, his foster mother was afraid on two counts. He had a bad leg and might never run normally. But he also had an alpha, i.e., lion personality. He tended to dominate, bully, and otherwise persecute other cats.

I knew what she was talking about, at least literarily. My first orange cat I named Webster, after a feline monster in a P.G. Wodehouse story. Webster belonged to a bishop, lived faultlessly, got put in the guardianship of the bishop’s Bohemian nephew, tasted alcohol, and became the warrior king of the neighborhood. My Webster failed to live up to that promise. He lived indoors and confined his combats to the occasional ambush of a cairn terrier who never once acknowledged his existence.

Why I didn’t take Elliott’s mom too seriously. In a house populated by sighthounds, cats are more prey than predator. The dogs are nice but flit by them too fast and instincts kick in. They are much much faster, even in a living room.

That was our concern. But Elliott settled in. His leg healed nicely. Completely in fact. He’s frigging fast now.

So he has a prosaic indoor life. He caught water fascination from the Bengal Izzie, and now he camps like a fool on the sink.

He lounges with the Big Guy, Mickey. Orange guys aren’t in it with ferals. Much much better to accept your station in life and watch TV with them, eh?

All is good and fine and proper, right?

And then there’s the really Big Guy. The One who’d better like you or else.

Elliott’s done that too. All the reports to foster mom emeritus have been positive. We keep sending nice stories to her.

Except that Elliott has a secret life. He goes outside. At will. We used to think it was an occasional escape. It’s not. He goes outside whenever he wants. He shows up at mealtimes. Always ambling in from the back yard. Beginning to think he’s the Webster of the story.

Exhibit One. His ear today. Izzie didn’t do it. At a third his weight she’s full of sound and fury and has never laid a glove on him. But he swaggered in this morning with an ear looking like this.

Nobody likes to be made a fool of. What I’m thinking. Elliott is sparring gently with the little Bengal girl, hanging out with Mickey, snoozing with Raebert, then bursting into the outside world of Elsinboro and kicking every cat ass in the neighborhood. Used to be a white cat who acted like he owned our whole yard. Don’t see him anymore. Whatcha gonna do? He weighs 20 pounds. He clears the dog gate as easily and fluidly as if he’s been practicing for the Olympics. He boxes better than any cat I’ve known and I’ve boxed a lot of cats. He’s an MMA guy. Just doesn’t want Mommy to know. Hence all the offhand strolling back in during dinner time. Hell. She’s even willing to blame the bloody ear on Izzie. Who’s got who fooled here?

Worst thing of all. He seems so full of himself these days. Like he knows something we don’t. Never a good sign in a cat. Never.

Frankly overwhelmed. As people check in with their lists and stories, I cannot keep up. Just today, Lake came in with his list. Which prompted a lot of questions, comments, and memories.

Thing is, I want to add some new posts. But I don’t want to strand this excellent conversation about Top 100s. This is the new home for all of that. New lists should be posted here. Comments on the lists of others should be posted here. Important point. We’re NOT moving on. We’re going to keep talking about music.

Hence, for example, my questions and comments for the newest list. Lake’s. You’re a teacher. No classical music at all?

Other than that, you’re driving me nuts. Bjork? She can’t sing, honey. And you have a second Icelandic song. What did they do to you up there?

You have a thing for Pink Floyd. Why? Although… the one thing you should have taken from MY list is that the best Pink Floyd cut ever is Van Morrison’s version of Comfortably Numb.

Envy? A lot. A whole bunch. Peter Gabriel. Driving home a point I’ve already lamented.

And something so consistent it almost seems like an affectation. Picking the less famous songs of bands so popular even I know them. So you have to choose something I’ve never heard of by Bush, something I barely remember by Glen Hansard, a (second and therefore superfluous) Sting song no one remembers, and a Metallica song nobody anywhere has ever heard of.

On the other hand, Iona. Had no idea there was any such thing as a true Celtic rock band. The singer is almost as pretty as the guitarist. Such a shame the Irish are running out of pretty people. A discovery worth all of this effort.

Explain yourself.

Back to ErisGuy. Memory is failing me. A song I know I committed to computer. Native American album, haunting cut featuring a digeridoo. Got it from a girl I met who was dying rapidly from cancer. Couldn’t stop listening to it. Now I can’t find the CD or the file. Any of you. Help me out…

Everybody else. Keep talking. Keep posting your lists.

Yeah. All your lists.

Guy. Struck by so much commonality. Especially with my wife. But I can see exactly how much younger than me you are. The song I had to look up was the Cure’s She Sells Sanctuary. Best of theirs I’ve ever heard. Congratulations.

ErisGuy. You’re in big trouble. Song Envy on a bunch. Ecstasy of Gold. Peter Gabriel. (I have a great story about him.) In the Air Tonight. Jingo. Al Stewart. ZZ Top. Dave Brubeck. Orbison. Like you’ve tapped into the vein of my second hundred. Gah. Not fair.

But. You owe us the story of your relation with Tangerine Dream. Which is outsized. I’m betting it’s monumental. And as for Qntal. I can go for Celtic Cuntal as easily as the next man.

Tim. Damn. I forgot all about Pearl Jam. Also forgot that fathers would love the silent lucidity of Fur Elise. Other than that your list is, uh, surprisingly various. Broadway to classical to hardcore. So you’re not the redneck you pretend? Big surprise. New to me? Looked up your Japanese entry. Is there a story? I just don’t know that world. Then there’s the Trey Parker Matt Stone montage. Closing in on a guess you don’t really have an ear for music, just meaning. Not a bad thing. Just no chance I will ever sell you on Gorecki.

All right. I’ll keep cycling through. Finding your hot spots. But it’s hard. Imagine working through these lists. Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, say something. I’m having a ball. Listening. The saying part, not so much.

Love you all for being here. Best news. Barbara is going to add her list too. Which will be very different from all of ours. But beautiful.

Finally, I’ve had a chance to review people’s Top 100 lists, which you’ll find in the comments here and here.

A few overview thoughts. It’s got to be the world’s most pleasurable Rorschach Test. It’s incredibly revealing to people who are genuinely interested in who you are. Yet it’s also a shot of adrenaline and self esteem for everyone who attempts it. When you look at the music that strikes your emotional chords in just that way, you rediscover memories you thought lost, scenes and times of your life that still matter all these years later, and you realize that your life — regardless of the prosaic patches we all have — has been amazingly rich, emotionally, sensorily, and esthetically. All this music is and has been in your head and heart the whole time. You are a very complicated person of unbelievably diverse interests. And you have more links to people and places and times and shared cultural events than a vine entwined tree in a tropical rainforest. Music memories are, in fact, a kind of time machine, instant transport to the emotional hot spots of our lives.

At first the 100 requirement seems excessive. But when you finish, you’re immediately struck by the fact that it’s hardly enough to convey the whole. You need another hundred or two or more, because this aspect of life we regard as peripheral to the important stuff is not peripheral at all. It’s the often silenced voice of our souls. It’s our connections, the demonstration of the metaphysical concept of the illusion of isolation. We do not exist separately and apart as everyday physics would suggest. When we pick a song we are absolutely, permanently connected in some way to everyone else who has been thrilled or moved by this same sequence of sounds.

I remember, for example, that the advent of iTunes was both a delight and, oddly, an emotional letdown. Everyone knows how much I love the Stones, but having acquired a number of their tracks, I did not play them as much as I thought I would. Not because I didn’t enjoy the music but because in spite of the fine sound quality, it did not pack the punch of a Stones A to Z weekend on “The Radio Station,” WMMR in Philadelphia. That was a communal, celebratory event. Every song that came on the radio in your car or living room was being shared by millions of others who were singing, doing air guitar riffs, and dance moves in concert with you.

It’s related to but distinct from actual attendance at a concert. In the arena you can see who is there. Some of the singing and dancing there is a function of direct contagion, people in proximity feeding off one another, influencing one another. Thoroughly enjoyable. Not gainsaying that. But the communion it represents and embodies is visible. There is something more mystical about the sensation of the invisible, the connections unseen that are nevertheless there.

I think I can illustrate. In 1989 The Rolling Stones released an album called Steel Wheels. The faithful had begun to think the band was broken beyond repair. Jagger and Richards had been publicly feuding for years, released their own solo albums, which generated additional spats between them. But then came Steel Wheels, and the impossible was going to happen, and there was going to be a monster tour. I was living in Dayton, Ohio, at the time, and the news came that the Stones would be doing a concert at Metropolitan Stadium, the home of the Cleveland Browns. Bought tickets, jumped in the car, and drove ecstatically to Cleveland.

Here’s the funny thing. The concert was fabulous, exceeding all expectations, but my keenest memory is not of the concert at all. It’s of the highway journey to the concert. Listening to the Stones on WMMS, Cleveland sister station of Philly’s WMMR, bopping along up the road, and then coming up behind a ratty old Black Dodge that obviously hadn’t been washed in months. As we neared the back bumper, prefatory to passing, we could see that someone had written a word by finger on the dirty trunk lid: STONES.

It was like one of those CGI scenes in the movies where the vast hidden network is suddenly illuminated in a radiant green light. I could instantly feel and see in my mind’s eye the stampeding pilgrimage of Stones fans from all over Ohio rolling toward Cleveland. An epiphany. Like all the lost returning home and being vouchsafed to recognize one another in the process of return. I was one of them and I felt more at home in that moment than I had ever felt during my six years of living in the state.

Contrast that with an image you all have in your heads — the teenage girl sulking in the back seat or walking the sidewalk with ear buds in her ears listening to her private playlist. She can’t hear conversations around her, is deaf to traffic noise, is as alone as it is possible to be. I’m not damning her. I have a set of earbuds too, and I have enjoyed listening to music I’m not likely to hear on the radio. I’m just saying (you know what I’m saying?) I do miss the aspect of sharing that the IPod technology seems to have stolen from us. I don’t know if I should feel sorry for her or not.

A very very long way of explaining why I have been so effusive in my appreciation for the lists people have posted. Every song I know and like on their lists is like an echo of the old radio communion. We have THIS in common, and I can start to imagine where you might have been when I was also listening to this music. Most have songs that are on my wife’s (still not written down) list but not on mine. Those are especially resonant. She has a cute way of dancing in her chair. It makes me imagine you doing the same, wherever you are.

Then there’s the whole other question of songs on your lists I don’t know. That’s what I’ve been digging into. And it’s like getting a letter out of the blue from a friend who’s telling you something you never knew.

For example, there’s************OOPS!

Lady Laird just called and I read her the post thus far. Over the phone I could see her making the cut throat gesture. What she said was, “Long enough already. Stop now. Do Part II later on.”

Sorry. I guess I got carried away. Stay tuned for, uh, Part II.

I should be happy. ErisGuy stepped up and did the full 100, conceding that hundred was a limitation. The bad part is that my list was in my head and now has to be translated to print. But I’m a man of my word. It’s alphabetical, drawn mostly from my iTunes file. Which is not as arbitrary as it seems. What you feel compelled to acquire says it’s important to you.

Adagio for Strings. Samuel Barber.
After the Storm. Mumford and Sons.
All You Zombies. The Hooters
And She Was. The Talking Heads.
And We Danced. The Hooters.
Ave Maria. Perry Como. (Shut up!)
Be My Baby. The Ronettes.
Be My Love. Mario Lanza.
Begin the Beguine. Artie Shaw
Be My Love. Mario Lanza.
Brown Sugar. The Rolling Stones.
C’est L’Amour. Edith Piaf.
C’mon C’mon. The Von Blondies.
Carmina Burana, Empress of the World. Orff.
Cat People, Putting out Fires. David Bowie.
Chimes of Freedom. Youssou N’Dour.
The Cicada. Linda Ronstadt.
The City of New Orleans. Arlo Guthrie.
Cleanin’ Out My Closet. Emine..
Come Dancing. The Kinks.
Comfortably Numb. Van Morrison.
Concerto for Clarinet and Oboe. Mozart.
Crazy. Gnarls Barkley
Don’t change. INXS.
Don’t Close Your Eyes. Keith Whitley.
Dreaming. Blondie.
El Condor Pasa. Simon & Garfunkel.
Elizabeth. Frank Sinatra.
Extreme Ways. Moby.
Gimme Shelter. Rolling Stones.
Glycerine. Bush.
God Save the Queen. Sex Pistols.
Good As I Was to You. Lorrie Morgan.
Groovin’. The Young Rascals.
Hallelujah. Jeff Buckley.
Have You Ever Seen the Rain. Credence Clearwater.
Heroes. David Bowie.
Hurt. Johnny Cash.
I Can’t Get Started. Bunny Berigan.
If You Go Away. Dusty Springfield.
I Wonder. Ronettes.
I Want to Know What Love Is. Foreigner.
I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. Warren Zevon.
I’m No Angel. Allman Brothers.
Into the Storm.
I’ve Been Loving You Too Long. Otis Redding.
I’ve Got You Under My Skin. Frank Sinatra.
Jump. Van Halen.
Jumpin’ Jack Flash. The Rolling Stones.
Just Lose It. Eminem.
Keep Me in Your Heart.. Warren Zevon.
Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. GNR.
Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. Warren Zevon.
Lady Jane. The Rolling Stones.
Lawyers, Guns and Money. Warren Zevon.
Lux Aeterna. Clint Mansell.
The Man I Love. Ella Fitzgerald.
Melissa. Allman Brothers.
Mixed Emotions. The Rolling Stones.
Mockingbird. Eminem.
The Nearness of You. Ted Heath.
Never Tear Us Apart. INXS.
November Rain. GNR.
Numb. Linkin Park.
Only Time. Enya.
Only Women Bleed. Alice Cooper.
Pagliacci, Vesti La Giubba. Leoncavallo. Mario Lanza.
Paint It Black. The Rolling Stones.
Please Stay. Warren Zevon.
Promontory. Soundtrack, Last of the Mohicans.
Rough Justice. The Rolling Stones.
Round & Round. Neil Young.
Seventh Heaven. Peter Wolf.
Sing for the Moment. Eminem.
Sing, Sing, Sing. Benny Goodman.
Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay. Otis Redding.
Sgt McKenzie. Soundtrack, We Were Soldiers.
Something in Red. Lorrie Morgan.
Soliloquy. Frank Sinatra.
Straight to Hell. The Clash.
Street Fighting Man. Rolling Stones.
Suo Gan. George Guest & Company
Suspicious Minds. Fine Young Cannibals.
Sweet Child O’Mine. GNR.
Sympathy for the Devil. Rolling Stones.
Symphony No. 2. Sibelius.
Symphony No. 3, Mvt 1. Gorecki.
Symphony No. 3, Mvt 2. Gorecki.
Symphony No. 3, Mvt 3. Gorecki.
Theme for Harry’s Game. Clannad.
Tom Traubert’s Blues. Tom Waits.
Touch of Grey. Grateful Dead.
Try a Little Tenderness. Frank Sinatra.
Un Bel Di. Puccini.
Unchained Melody. Righteous Brothers.
The Very Thought of You. Nat King Cole.
Waltz for Debby. Bill Evans Trio.
The Way I Am. Eminem.
West End Blues. Louis Armstrong.
What Is Love. Haddaway.
What’s Now is Now. Frank Sinatra.
When I Saw You. The Ronettes.
White Room. Cream.
White Wedding. Billy Idol.
Winter. Rolling Stones.
Worst Day Since Yesterday. Flogging Molly.
You Gotta Fight for the Right to Party. Beastie Boys.
You’ll Never Walk Alone. Frank Sinatra.
1916. Motorhead.

Okay. I know this is more than a hundred. I need another hundred. At least. My head is filled with all the missing. Do you feel the same way? Can you even believe there’s so much music in our heads? The human brain. The mind, all the associations. Staggering.

Does anybody feel like talking about it? I could do this for a week…

I know, I know. ErisGuy set the standard on the Top 100. I will keep my bargain.

But in the interim there is great, fantastic, beautiful news. Michael Vick has signed with the New York Jets. Which means our long domestic nightmare is over.

The sigh of relief in this household is like a strong wind. You cannot know. Lady Laird was always the fiercest of Eagles fans. Her blood is Kelly green.

The catastrophe happened on August 14, 2009.

It really did break her heart.

So we’ve been dealing with it for five years. Why this is not a trivial post. She transferred her loyalty to the Baltimore Ravens, whom I had always hated because they were the Cleveland Browns, stolen from a city and a heritage I loved. It has galled me that the Ravens won two Super Bowls which should have belonged to Cleveland, where frauds wearing the uniform of Jimmy Brown stumble around in the home of NFL football.

The Ravens. Named after a poem, for God’s sake.

So we’ve been playing this odd game for, oh, five years now. You guys, pay attention. How you have to dig deep and understand your wife, because what she says and even shouts is not her true heart. So I, who also hated the Vick acquisition, continued to watch the Eagles. So she could too. I deliberately overlooked her cheering, which was a mere vestige of her lost fealty. I pretended I was the sad sack fan who still rooted for the Eagles because he always had. Which, to be honest, I hadn’t. Until they moved into a dome in the post Bud Grant era I was a fan of the Minnesota Vikings in the NFC. And I was also a fan of the old Oakland Raiders in the AFC. When the Raiders buried the Eagles in the Super Bowl, I was technically rooting for the Eagles. But in my heart, I was as delighted as when Ali decked Foreman in the boxing upset of the century. Yes!

Ironically, my Eagles allegiance is comparatively new and attributable to my wife. The same one who turned her back on the whole enterprise. So I’ve been carrying this tiny little flickering candle all this time, tolerating the Ravens, alternately dissing and rooting for the Eagles, and now, suddenly, we burst again into the light.

Life is beautiful. Love is even more beautiful. Because it’s not a starburst as so many think. It’s a vulnerable, tiny flame we carry and protect from harm to the best of our ability.

Philadelphia. A city that is both gorgeous and our cultural home. We are Eagles. And we do fly. Lady Laird can come home again. Hallelujah.

Let us close with what should be the National Anthem. (Other versions are here, here, and everywhere else you look.)

This is a doomed project. There just aren’t enough of us here, and the momentum is swinging toward Instapunk Rules, where all hell is about to break loose. But I’ll proceed nonetheless. Why? Because we all have a Top 100 of songs, soundtracks, anthems, arias, whatever, that constitute the sonic context of our lives. Top Ten doesn’t begin to cover it or make the point.

See, it’s the whole hundred that shows us to ourselves. A number that makes us dig, makes us recognize that we’re more complicated than we seem even to ourselves. Life is rich, people. And so are you. You have lived in all kinds of music, which may even constitute a sort of map of your soul. You might say, for example, I’m a Motown girl, but there’s more to your life than the Supremes and the Temptations. You heard that song from Titanic once, you watched MTV for years you scarcely remember, you were in a jazz club where somebody played the cornet too beautifully for words, you saw a Fred Astaire movie where he stuck your heart like a dart, your parents listened to Neil Diamond or Neil Young, your one time fiancé liked Rachmaninov, and these bits of music are all attached to you, whether you see yourself that way or not. You are the sum total of these musics. That’s why the challenge is not ten but a hundred.

An invitation for you to see who you are.

I’ve already been through the exercise. Eye opening. Facilitated by iTunes. The problem was not reaching 100. It was the amount of time I wound up listening and the limitation to a mere hundred.

Why I’m prepared to strike a bargain. I wouldn’t want my list to spark a me too response. And I frankly believe that people here are mostly too uptight to open themselves to this kind of personal exploration. Hint: If all of your top hundred are growly derivatives of Metallica, you’re probably Brizoni. Which no one wants to learn about himself.

The bargain? Try to be as expansive as you can. Don’t try to show off. If your list is all Broadway show tunes, that’s not bad news. It’s insight for you. Share your list as far you can push it, song/opus title and performer/composer, and however far you get toward 100, that’s how far I’ll go. If someone gets to 30, I’ll do 30. If someone gets to 100, I’ll do 100. Simple enough?

Not a ranked list by the way. Everything is equal in this competition. If 99 Red Balloons is #1 on your list because it’s the first thing you think of we won’t assume you like it better than the third movement of Beethoven’s Ninth you list at #88. The same. All part of your Top 100.

There are no prizes, sad to say. Just an opportunity for you to realize how much depth and diversity there is in your own experience of life. And the opportunity to share it with others.

Lady Laird was giving me a hard time about this. “So there are maybe three, four songs of the hundred that aren’t Stones?”

“Yes,” I told her with some asperity. And I meant it to sting.

Now. What I expect. A few half-assed top ten lists. A lot more silence. Which is okay. But not nearly as much fun as the tangle we could get into by listing our lives in song and hearing each others’ memories. Unless you’re not up for an intimacy more real than hooking up at a college mixer.

That would be up to you.

P.S. Yeah, I used the word doom. Zevon is dead. A decade now. The good news is I didn’t choose the final track of his final album, called The Wind. That would be bad news. But it is on my list.

 
Just look at the video he brought home with him. He wondered if he should stick it in the Adventure post. No. This IS the adventure post. Back from The Top of the World is a story all its own. I’m sure he’ll tell it in his own time.

Something caused Lady Laird yesterday to reference “Et in Arcadia…?” And for a humble fellow like myself it was but a moment’s work to shout: “Ego!”

The translation is, “Even in Arcadia, there am I.” Where Lake has been, Arcadia being a classical synonym for paradise. (At least until he watches the Icelandic cinematic wonder called The Sea.)

But I have to say a serious word about this. People tend to think you have to seek out adventure. Not true. The ones who keep their heads down, work their asses off, and try to be the best at whatever discipline often seem to have adventures thrust upon them. Life finds the living. Please believe this.

Everything mysterious will be revealed in time. Most important, though, is that until it is, you just have to give every ounce of your ability to whatever it is you’re doing.

A friend sent me this picture of a dog sold for more than a million dollars.

My wife observed that Tibetan mastiffs make Raebert look dainty.

No, they don’t. Raebert is anything but dainty. He just makes Tibetan mastiffs look fat, dumb, and stupid.

And Lake makes the silver spoon millennials look silly and pointless.

Starring German actress Luise Rainer as the Chinese peasant Olan. She won an Oscar. Can we have her back, please?

Starring Katherine Hepburn, playing Katherine Hepburn of course, in “yellowface,’ because she was Katherine Hepburn and could do anything.

Starring Nancy Kwan, neé Kwanski, who not only played an Asian but also pretended to be an Asian because it was starting to be politically correct to be white and acting Asian.

[What Nancy Kwanski actually looked like. She did a nice job in the role.

]

All of the above are examples of what Asian film scholars call the disgraceful practice of “yellowface,” meaning White People standing in GeForce Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese people whenever some story is about them. They go on quite a bit about it:

Among the first appearances of yellowface in film was in a work by D.W. Griffith, best known for The Birth of a Nation, a racially-charged epic featuring characters in blackface that became so popular it reignited the Klan. Before that film, Griffith targeted Asians through yellowface in his 1910 short, The Chink at Golden Gulch.

“Like a lot of Griffith’s films at that period it was about a white woman in jeopardy and peril, and a white man coming to save them,” says Dr. Daniel Bernardi, author of Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness.

Yellowface characters would persist through the 1930s, as contrarian and villainous characters in The Mask of Fu Manchu, or in meek and withdrawn roles as in Madam Butterfly. Even as Asian characters became more complex in the 1940s and 50s, the roles were still played by white actors, like Katherine Hepburn in the 1944 drama, Dragon Seed.

The sad thing is, it just doesn’t work. When asked to play Asians, real Asians are so over the top burlesque with it they are unconvincing, embarrassing, and disruptive to whatever work they’re involved with. The picture above is from Asian actor Mi’Ki Runi’s performance in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Even Audrey Hepburn looked like she wanted to throw up. That’s why when one of the larger and more profitable New York publishing houses wanted to publish the first novel by a Chinese woman since Pearl Buck, they decided it wasn’t safe to repeat the risk from the 1930s. They searched high and low for the lovely Ting Aling and came up with a winner.

Okay. Fun time is over. This book really was written by a Chinese woman. We were just kidding you, putting youn in a jolly mood before you started reading. No more delays are possible. Here you go. Straight up Chinese subject, writing style, and Greeking. Have at it.

Her Mother’s Daughter

Chapter One

My mother was Chinese. She had Chinese hair and eyes, and she spoke Chinese. She never spoke anything but Chinese. For a long time we didn’t get along. I think I resisted being Chinese. I had Chinese hair and Chinese eyes, but I didn’t know a word of Chinese. I used to look in the mirror wishing that my hair would change color and texture, that like a transforming sea it would billow into waves and shimmer in highlights and perhaps some blond streaks. When I was pensive before the mirror, my eyes became even more slitted, like the openings in an artillery bunker my first boyfriend said. He was poetic and entranced with my exoticism, but more to the point he was blond and blue-eyed and I slept with him the night before my fourteenth birthday. I told my mother all about it in English, and she shrieked at me in Chinese, but not about my lost virginity, because she didn’t understand a word of English. Instead she shrieked at me on general principles, in that voice which is the voice of all aging Chinese women, part bird of prey, part rusty bell, part bag of broken glass. Whenever she shrieked at me all I could think was that I didn’t want to sound like her when I got old. Vaguely, I suppose, I had acquired the fantasy that I would find a way to cease being Chinese long before I reached middle age.

Her name was Chou Chinchiptioua Hua, or at least that’s what it sounded like. In school I learned to write my last name as S-M-I-T-H and my schoolteacher was never the wiser. This was in Brooklyn after all, where everyone is a mongrel mix of nationalities and where the Smiths have made it their business to marry some of every kind. Every kind but Chinese that is.

After I slept with Jimmy I told my mother I was going to be a writer, because I had figured out that if I became a writer I would be emancipated and it wouldn’t matter that I had slept with a boy when I was thirteen, but if I became anything else I would also be a slut, and I still didn’t want to be a slut at the age of thirteen because I had not yet learned how much I hated being Chinese and how much I hated my mother, even though I really always loved my mother, which is hard to say even now, because I hate her so much.

I suppose that somewhere in all this I could get to the point and explain why the story of a Chinese girl who had a Chinese mother should be intrinsically interesting, interesting enough to outweigh the enormous difficulty I have in getting to the point of anything, but that is, after all, the point, because I have learned through long years of learning and practice and experience that I have nothing whatever to say if I ever do manage, somehow, to stumble onto a point, because my obsession is with one subject only, and it’s not an interesting subject, being the subject of me and what it is like to be me, and how much I have always hated being me, until I reached the point of being able to pretend that I really liked being me, because no other identity was possible, and no round-eyed fairy godmother ever showed up to translate me into a blond highlighted version of myself without a Chinese mother and without an ineradicable penchant for going on and on and on about me, or about my mother and her relatives, which is really just another way of going on about me, and so instead, I had to learn the most important of all things about writing, which is that you can change the names of everyone you know, including yourself, and suddenly all that going on and on and on you do about the most irrelevant and depressing trivia imaginable will become, in an instant, the most marvelously subtle and brilliant fiction, which is what I am writing now.

And so at the age of eight, I first discovered that 畫過共爾問花那壓的，大北坡設濟能，內你處他許們顧怎馬、由多沒度護民，歡就為中心沒的因把且房事人方李點會定她在一後……男還前加，一跟國定任她親力已政館放目至眼的。不的良三預般長養心？族住片是異果沒有孩多事。同兒一得走跟形；都計影解拿前一存器半的怕？麼壓性排相，是公選的議子推晚國該轉火；國麼男，了石比一境長開手來性的想個，開此習世何面做情關人對。然轉成的通不農文求車持度魚定之，同就的教辦出個以不時著與著半不依得素日陽出之天也一。