Music of Memory

Life in the City of Dreams ebbs and flows. I was in the car one evening on the way to Inglewood I think; a drive I’ve sat through more than twice. If you take La Cienega Boulevard the trip is a quintessentially Los Angeles visual experience. La Cienega is one of the major north- south arteries of the city. Named for the marshland which once stood in its place, it comes in at almost thirteen well travelled miles long. It was built in part to freeway standards in the late 1940s. In our neighbourhood it runs through Baldwin Hills. There are flashes of the sweeping panoramic skyline, of palm trees, hills and white buildings nestling on top. Caught in the midst of this momentary perspective, with the neon signs and vast billboards that line the road in the foreground, you couldn’t be anywhere but where you are.

In this strange epoch where we seem forgetful of the strength of our humanity, I feel increasingly like a character caught in the clinical fantasy of a cynical bueaucrat.  Music which calls to mind memories from happier days, when life was full and free, is a source of great comfort. I think it was the nature of this particular drive which encouraged me to select Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers; all of a sudden Into the Great Wide Open was all that I wanted to hear.

‘Well I started out, down a dirty road

Started out all alone

And the sun went down as I crossed the hill

And the town lit up, the world got still

I’m learning to fly but I ain’t got wings

Coming down is the hardest thing’

As the first bars of the opening song ‘Learning To Fly’ began, with the strumming guitar, the drums and finally the voice, the world smiled a little brighter. The album is perfect music for driving down these endless roads in this vast arena of lights where for minutes the world truly does seem still.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were a staple of our childhood. We listened to Full Moon Fever and Into the Great Wide Open, along with the earlier, great album Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough). There are many wonderful songs on that last one; Ain’t Love Strange is a favourite of mine. I saw them perform with Bob Dylan during the Temples in Flames Tour in October 1987 in Birmingham at the NEC arena and remember bright flashes of the evening.  

I knew all the lyrics to all of the songs on those albums; still do for the most part. We used to belt out Free Fallin’- that one is easy to play on the guitar. I loved this song with all of my teenage heart. It spoke to me of love’s powerful sadness and of the mystery of America. There was something magical about the places he mentioned and I longed to see all of them. Then there was the song’s last verse; simple words sung against a simple enough tune but the loss still hit like a body blow. When I think about it now, it’s the name in the sky image that does the trick. As he writes her name it evaporates into the air. The singer can’t grasp his love’s essence in anyway and yet he feels so deeply that he wants to write her name in the sky where space is endless.  

‘I wanna glide down over Mulholland

I wanna write her name in the sky

I wanna free fall out into nothin’

Oh I’m gonna leave this world for a while.’

I was young when I first heard these songs. Living worlds away from here in the north of England I dreamt of visiting California. Now, years later and many miles past that girl with future dreams in her eyes, I know the places mentioned in the songs. I know Reseda, my son went to school in the Valley just minutes away from Ventura Boulevard and I’ve driven Mulholland Drive many times. The dream has become the everyday. And yet, perhaps that is part of the peculiar magic of this dream drenched city of ours. The enemy within would like to bury us in the coffin of the commonplace; to have us believe that routine is real. Yet we are surrounded by dreams here; the very place names carry within them the dreams of millions. Then there is the open sky. With its space and with its light this city challenges us to look outwards, beyond the ordinary and towards the timeless.

Memory of youth’s immortality has a bittersweet flavour for us all and, as adults, we must experience the truth of our deeply human failings if we wish for wisdom. To reconcile one’s past desires with the reality of the present in a city which offers the space to recognise illusion is the perfect antidote to complacency in this series of dreams.