anymore. So, that one was kinda my fault, I guess. [Laughs.]
Of course I’ll always love her, even though she put me through so many flavours of hell over the years. And I wish her the best, wherever she is. And I really have no clue. You know that, right, Berner?
If you came to me hoping I’d be able to help find her, you’re barking up the complete wrong tree. Have you checked every single island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca? Because she’s an island girl. I can’t decide if it’s because she needs to be near the ocean, in order to feel calmed by the great vastness of it, the way it puts a person’s petty little problems in perspective, or if she just feels most at home when she can see trouble coming from any direction, so she can make a break for it. She always keeps access to some kind of little dinghy or something. An island is like a fortress, but it’s also something you can escape from quick in a boat, and leave your pursuer behind, standing on the dock, shaking their fist. I know about that because she turned me into that person for a while. And fuck her for that. Fuck her.
I was already attracted to her way before I heard her play. She’s actually a very pretty girl, if she lets you look at her the right way. She must be the grand champion of making missing teeth seem sexy. She just has this special way about her. Any way I can think of to describe it just sounds silly or clichéd. What’s a clever way to say she has a twinkle in her eye, when she actually has an honest-to-God twinkle in her eye? What’s a clever way to say she seemed to be holding a magic secret that she was thinking about maybe sharing with you, when that’s just exactly how she is? I don’t know. I’m a songwriter. I don’t pretend to be a poet.
So, I was already into her before I heard her play. But then, when I heard her play, that was it. Boom. Oh my God. I’d never heard anyone play that way before. It made me realize exactly what it was that I was trying to do when I sang and played guitar, but I hadn’t known it was okay to play that way. I was so afraid of doing it wrong, of messing up. But DD’s playing was never afraid of that.
If you want to understand DD’s way of playing, I’ll try to tell you the best I can, but I have to tell you a story, so you have to be patient. All right?
Ever watch one of those shows that’s all over the TV, like American Idol, or The Voice, or The X Factor? The talent-contest shows where they “discover” new “stars.” Well, a couple years ago I was over at my auntie’s, and one of those was on, and you know how TV can just be on, but you’re not really watching it, but somehow, without realizing, you really are watching it? Intently. And these poor little fuckers, most of them kids, but some of them people like me in their thirties now, but who never gave up on the dream, the dream of “making it,” they’re singing these fucking stupid songs that people have heard a million times, like a Billy Joel song or whatever. They are just so fucking, fucking eager to please. They know they’re being judged. And they know that other people will decide if they’re a “real singer” or not. They want to impress. They want to impress the judges, they want to impress their parents in the audience, they want to impress the audience. It’s so fucking sad watching these shows. Some of these singers can really hit those crazy high notes, and swoop around, and falsetto like a beached dolphin and everything. I mean, they can really sing. Technically. And some of them know it. But they don’t sing in a free way, in a true way. Because the way they sing, you can feel that they want to know if you think they can sing, too.
Then the show was over, and they hadn’t picked a winner yet, but Auntie and me pretty much knew who was the best singer and all, and so what? was what we were both thinking, without saying anything.
Auntie turned off the TV. She said, “Come on, let’s listen to this old record I’ve got. It’s got your grandmother’s favourite song on it,” and we went into her living room.
As she went through her collection, looking for it, she said, “You know, your grandmother hated doctors, and she didn’t go to the hospital till the neighbour came by and found her lying on the couch, moaning, with a bulge in her tummy like she was pregnant and half to term. They rushed her to emergency and she never left the hospital again.
“When we used to go to the hospital to visit her, I would bring my little portable record player and she would always say ‘Play it. Play my favourite song,’ and I would play a 45 I had of Frank Sinatra singing ‘My Way’ and she would close her eyes and listen, and when it came to the part where he would say, ‘let the record show, I took the blows’, your grandmother would always do the same thing, where she would scrunch her eyes up tight when he sang, ‘let the record show, I took the blows,’ as if she was taking the blows right there. And we knew she was thinking of your mother and our big brother, who she wasn’t able to keep from being taken away, and how she finally managed to get them out of there, unlike many who didn’t survive. You could see it all on your grandmother’s face as he sang ‘let the record show’ and then she would take the blows, and then Old Blue Eyes would take a breath and just let it rip with ‘… and did it … my way —’ and her face would just relax. She would mouth those words and she would escape, escape from the pain for that little moment where she and Frankie sang ‘My Way’ together.”
My auntie reached into the record collection of beat-up LP jackets. They all had those yellowish circles that get worn into the old white covers from the inside out, you know, from the disks pressing on them over the decades. She pulled out a record with no title on it, just an image, a yellow and orange painting of a sun.
“And then exactly a year after we’d buried your grandmother,” Auntie said, “I saw this record in the Kelly’s, and the cover kind of caught my eye. I looked on the back of it, and there was a picture of a homely black girl on it, not a pretty lady like Diana Ross or Lena Horne (don’t get me wrong, I love those ladies). And the last track of the second side was ‘My Way.’ So I went to a listening booth, and I put on the last track of this album and just listened. It’s my favourite song, my favourite record of all time, and I’m going to play it for you now, Amy.”
Then Auntie played the record.
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard Nina Simone’s version of “My Way,” but it kicks the living shit out of Sinatra’s version. I’m not against Sinatra’s music, although I hear he was an asshole in life (but who wasn’t?). Sinatra’s version is like a boxer who just came out of the ring. He took some shots, he got knocked down, sure. And now he’s gonna retire, but he basically won. He persevered and he won. He’s the Champ.
Nina Simone’s version is not like that. Without telling me anything about it, I knew what Auntie was saying when she looked hard at me, as we listened to the record. Auntie was telling me that when she played Sinatra’s version of “My Way” for my grandmother when she was being eaten alive by the cancer, my grandmother, in her mind, in her soul, was actually singing Nina Simone’s version, even though it hadn’t been recorded yet. And I understood that my auntie was telling me this without her having to do anything at all but look at me as the record played. Do you understand what I mean?
You go out and buy that Nina Simone record with “My Way” on it, and you listen to that after watching a whole hour of one of those fucking shows like American Idol or The Voice or whatever. And you listen to Nina Simone. And you will hear, without any doubt, how Nina Simone does not give a single, tiny, living fuck what you or anybody else thinks about how she is singing that song. She is in the song, she is the fucking song. She heard Sinatra sing it, and she took it, and said, “That’s mine. I will express the things that must be said through this song. Because they must be said. And it will not be ‘perfect.’ And you will hear what I have been through. And you will feel it.”
That’s how DD plays the violin. Like that.
Jasmine McKittrik
Dharma
