THE STORY: I am currently dating a woman named Fred. She
is finishing a Ph.D. in groundwater modeling at MIT. When I want to convince people that I
am dating a gay model, I truthfully say: "I am dating Fred, who is into modeling
professionally." Fred and I have a long history. We went to adjoining high schools
and right after my freshman year of college we had a romantic fling. Ten years later, I
visited her for the heck of it and we rekindled the spark. This song is about that trip.
First of all, you have to know something about Fred (that's her to the right). She started as a literature major, got accepted into an exclusive writing program at Wesleyan, and ended up getting interested in earth science. She eventually graduated with a Science and Technology Studies degree, which I think of as "science for weenies" or "humanities people trying to convince themselves they know more about science than Thom Kuhn told them." She worked for an environmental consulting firm for 4 and 1/2 years and then entered MIT Ph.D. program in hydrology. MIT is, of course, the top engineering school in the world, and she entered it with virtually no math background. She will finish the degree in the spring of 1999. She can also pick up songs off the radio and play them on her guitar, a skill I’m not really close to being able to do. And she belly dances.
She feels inadequate much of the time, which is what the Ph.D. program at MIT is really all about. It doesn't matter how much you know, but if you can convince your committe that you are fully miserable then you graduate. Of course, inadequacy is a ridiculous feeling for someone degreed in both literature and science who can play music by ear and belly dance. The chorus of this song is my pep talk to her.
Lyrics |
| Every 10 years another comet goes by Our deepest emotions and passions can die But what has remained are the things about you I adore You're better than you give yourself credit for Painting
your fingers and walking the town Talking for hours knowing each word is true Time will erase all the things that we do |
On the second day of my fated visit, she took me walking on the Freedom Trail in Boston. She thought of it as a short little walk and I though of it as the rough equivalent of the Bataan Death March. I was thoroughly exhausted and so she mercifully let me sit down on a park bench in the Boston Commons near a duck pond. We amused ourselves painting her fingernails and looking at the ducks and geese while lying upside down. Try it some time – ducks really look weird if their feet are where their heads should be. Drawn to the site of greatness, the director of Good Will Hunting shot a very memorable scene on that very same park bench. That very evening we became romantically involved again, and through a convoluted series of events are still together now a year later.
MUSICAL NOTES: For the instrumental on this song we experimented for the first time using 2 instruments instead of one. Thus, the instrumental verse starts with a keyboard lead and then ends with an acoustic guitar lead. Bill and I were both shocked by how well it worked for the keyboard lead to end going down the scale and colliding with the guitar lead coming up the scale. Other than that, I just like the "Hootie and the Blowfish" style guitar strumming. This is a mix done by David Cox (see the "And Now This..." album cover below), and the vocals are all but completely inaudible. Of course, that probably is NOT a mistake but IS a reasoned reaction to my vocals.