There’s a scene in this [great] 8o’s movie where Peter Weller, Buckeroo, hears a woman crying as he’s onstage playing with his band The Hong Kong Cavaliers. He asks for a spotlight on her and talks to her from the stage. After hearing Penny Pretty’s (Ellen Barkin) sad story there are some shuffled laughs. Buckeroo says “Hey hey now, don’t be mean. We don’t have to be mean, because remember: no matter where you go, there you are.”
Moments ago I heard the Beatles Norwegian Wood play on the car radio. My brother played and sang that song at Charles and my wedding 19 years ago. I’d asked him to do the music, we didn’t really talk any specifics, so: Norwegian Wood’s beautiful acoustic guitar melody by Bill and and his gentle voice …so I lit a fire, isn’t it good, norwegian wood?
Interesting choice for a wedding, the surrealistic lyrics of sleeping in a bath, maybe a story connected to drugs and relationships on the fly, who knows, who cares. But I was brought right back to Bill. It’s been 8 years since he passed away and hearing that song as I pulled over and stared ahead, a wave of something I tried to identify lasted the 3 or so minutes. Like a movie montage—his bands in his garage, our wedding, his illness, wondering how Kay is doing, Jack and Cora’s music he won’t hear, the music they can’t share with him, the guitar they play was given to me by him when he was a studio rock musician in Hollywood, I was still in highschool… Endless, the brain’s chunks of pinball bouncing, searching to land somewhere.
Buckeroo’s “Remember: No Matter Where You Go, There You Are” became a bit of a mantra in my circle of friends back when we saw the movie (2, 3 times in a row) in the Valley Art in Tempe, AZ. We were grad students in art trying to lighten up, or the opposite. I still love it. I was reminded of Buckeroo’s 8th dimension today.
A pile-up of it-doesn’t-matter pinball-searching scorching-experience. Onward.
margo halverson 