Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 62

pismotality
(42/M/London, England)

(continues)

I talked in a recent post about discovering, or fully appreciating with age, simple pleasures like being with a friend's family. Losing a layer of selfconsciousness and sort of - melting together, is how I think of it. And in its small but significant way doowop stands for the greater good when we can give ourselves up to something else and is therefore a powerful model for life. (I don't have Nowhere to Run to hand but my memory is that King uses the phrase "spiritual experience" [about his streetcorner singing days] and makes clear none of the later success was in the same league.)

The act of listening to ITSOTN is, as I've said, another part of the same thing: we acknowledge those needs, those romantic aspirations, in ourselves; we don't protect ourselves by mocking their naivete, because they are about our deepest feelings. Close to the bone.

And the act of sharing those feelings on this board (and it's been great, and very touching, to see so much positive proof that others are receptive too) is also a part of that melting, that blending together started by those four (or five) guys in New Haven on that night. Bruce is no doubt right about the number of the group but maybe there's a sense in which - though I'm not even going to attempt to claim this for Fred Parris' thought processes, though it's a neat idea - maybe there's a sense in which the listener, that other vital component, is the fifth Satin: part, finally (once it goes out over the literal airwaves) of that melting, that blending together initiated by those guys.

And the process of this sort of writing seems like a metaphor in itself. As I said when moaning about my cyberspace loss, I can't back these things up. I type direct onto that little rectangle, bit of checking for clarity (concision would take longer), then press "Post Message". It's always a slightly tense moment: will that sign come up saying the message is too long? Did I get too involved, reluctant to break the flow, and now face the tedium of having to check like for "real" writing? Will there be that horrific sign claiming I haven't logged in, and when I press "previous" the Message rectangle is returned, dazzlingly blank again?

Or will there be - and this is the magic, this is the doowop moment - the sign that my phone is dialling - the image of a telephone with red indicator arrows circling a globe, the word "connecting" plus three dots, then a melting of the screen – an anxious moment - a second, and then my message there, clear on the board? That moment of melting, and that satisfaction at the sight of the thought transmitted, public, shareable, both with you and our wider audience, within a breath of its being framed, feels like nothing but a doowop moment, a moment of harmony.

(continues)