Driving Sideways

There's always music, music to seep softly through the edges, music to fill up the spaces. In 1992, it was Tori Amos' "Under the Pink", which I played non-stop for an entire summer. I never grew tired of it, even on the long and pointless drives around the Columbus city ring, or the days that I would pick a direction and drive until I didn't want to run away anymore. At night sometimes, I would let it play and drifted into it, wanting to be as helpless as I felt.

This time it has been Aimee Mann, mostly "Lost in Space" and now "Bachelor #2". And in the rare moments when that won't do the trick, it's been the Indigo Girls' "Become You" or Tanya Donelley's "Beautysleep". But truly, this time it has been Aimee as the Witness. Aimee has been the one who understood and sang of understanding. Aimee has been the one to hold the line. And like before, sometimes I listen to her for hours on repeat. CD Players now are in computers, on gaming systems, or they spit out MP3s for any number of applications. Aimee plays on.

So, last night I did something that I've always refused to do. I went to a concert alone. But it was Aimee Mann, on the lawn, at the zoo, and I was guaranteed to be able to get as close to the stage as I wanted. So I was there, a few rows back, alone on the grass as other couples, families, groups of friends gathered on blankets with coolers, as other lives intersected with mine. As it turned out, by the time she took the stage I was sandwiched between a man bearing a striking resemblance to Richard Simmons who would clap his hands together rapidly when each song started, and two couples arranged as best as they could on a small beach towel around a bowl of fresh pasta salad. My space was the width of my body and the length of my legs. Neither group said a single word to me. But as strange as I found that, I didn't care. My view of Aimee was perfect. Her emotion was clear and her performance captured exactly what her CDs gave me.

She, tall and thin, white-blonde, fluid, donated the proceeds from the concert to the giraffes. I found it extremely appropriate, and equally as symbolic of a certain kind of awkward non-belonging. I imagine giraffes in the wild as the gawky, teenage girl at the prom, the lions and hyenas around the water bowl, the apes on the dance floor. The giraffe, head between her legs and she drinks, doesn’t make a sound. And it wasn’t that Aimee was a giraffe, out of place, gangly. It was that I remembered exactly what it had been like for me in school, and probably why her music is reaching me on that level twenty years later in the middle of a divorce. And maybe, looking at her, listening to her, I felt a kinship and an understanding that somehow made me belong, made me belong in this crowd between the mascaraed man and the yuppie foursome, at least for the two hours she graced our lives. But she’ll now always be my giraffe. And maybe she too sings of understanding that, somehow.

When she was finished, after two encores, I picked up my sandals and my water bottle and melted into the crowd. When I got home, I turned off the CD…