Tag: records

music, writing life

If Wishes Were Horses

Sue

“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” ~ Scottish proverb & nursery rhyme

I have a story that began last week and also a very long time ago. I wasn’t going to share it, but when I told a friend about it and saw her reaction, I realized I wanted to write it down to think about it some more. First I need to give a bit of backstory to (hopefully) help it make more sense for anyone who hasn’t read my previous posts about why I started writing again after thirty years. It’s complicated, but to keep it short: I now have the space and time in my life to allow the creative process to take over because that’s what it does for me. It completely takes over. In the space of a year I wrote a novel, and then I rewrote it several times more. Finally satisfied, I sent query emails to a couple of literary agents along with the first chapter. And then I started writing a second novel that’s a spin-off from the first one. About halfway through the second novel, I realized this story could not exist until I was truly happy with the first one. Confusing, I know.

It was summer by then and I decided to step away from my desk to get out of my head and spend more time outdoors. The younger writer I used to be would’ve told myself to quit overthinking the process and press on. This older version understands after living a long time that creativity is not a race to the finish line. It’s a marathon of uphill climbs. Something wasn’t working for a reason and I needed space to figure out why. By fall, I was itching to write again, but still not ready to revisit the two novels. So instead I read insightful memoirs about writing written by published authors. One of those was Stephen King’s “On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft”. I’d read it once before when it was published about twenty years ago and can’t remember what I thought about it then. This time, however, I found myself dog-earing pages and highlighting paragraphs to read again and again. Above all else, one idea of his particularly inspired me and I’m paraphrasing it here: if two separate stories aren’t working, try combining them into one. It was as if a light turned on in my imagination. And so begins a different (yet familiar) novel…

I borrowed a character from each of my two novels and I made them sisters. I made them my age. I took a lake from one story and a small town from the other and I relocated it and combined it under one made up name. The setting is loosely based on two places I spent a lot of time in during my late teens and early adulthood. Hope, B.C. where my parents had their retirement house, and on Cultus Lake where I spent many long summer days hanging out with friends. I made the two sisters complete opposites, telling their story from very different perspectives and outlooks on life. In other words, one chapter is told by one sister and the next one is narrated by the other one, and so on. In order to create and keep track of their unique voices, I’ve had to mentally envision them as Nice Sister and Mean Sister. Not their names, of course, just their attitudes. And not surprising, Mean Sister’s perspective has become the most fun to write.

It’s a story as old as time. Siblings who must confront a shared past while temporarily stuck together in the present moment. It’s summertime in a small, lakeside town. There’s a cast of quirky, secondary characters–the townsfolk–who have secrets and troubles of their own. The sisters grew up here, abandoned by their superstar mother in the early seventies so she could freely chase her rock and roll dreams. Then they’re reunited with her as teenagers in the late seventies to become her backup singers for one summer tour. Now in their fifties, the sisters are forced to reconcile the past in order to move forward in their present lives. And because this is written by me, there must be humour to even out the drama, and great background music to give it a dreamy, nostalgic feel. My comfort tunes, mainly from the sixties, seventies and eighties. The music that has shaped my own life and inspired me to dream. The first chapter begins at the present time, with Nice Sister about to take a shower when the doorbell rings….She answers it to receive an unexpected gift package from an unknown person. While this has no meaning right now, it does later on in my real-life story–which I will get to very soon, I promise.

Chapter five, at exactly 13,793 words, I mopped one of the sisters, figuratively speaking, into a corner and I had to wait for the floor to dry for the next scene to unfold in my mind. I was as stuck as she was. While staring at a blank page, the cursor blinking at me, I suddenly typed this from the character’s perspective: “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. My grandma used to say that, I think. Or maybe I’d heard it in a song.” My paternal grandmother did used to say that to me often when I was a kid. I’d tell her I wish I had this or I wish I could do that and she’d give me that horses line. It’s a Scottish proverb and a verse in a very old nursery rhyme. I had no idea why she was calling me a beggar because all I’d done was state the truth. My own sisters have said that as a toddler I used to tell them, “I wish I was a mouse so I could climb into your pocket and go with you.” A storyteller, even then. As for the song part, it was also familiar to me in a warmly nostalgic way, but I couldn’t place it. So I went on a Google deep dive, as the curious tend to do when avoiding work. This is what I remembered…

In seventh grade there was a song that played so often on local radio station CFUN that I ended up making a poster of it in art class. “Roxy Roller” by the Vancouver glam rock band Sweeney Todd. Nick Gilder was the front man of the band at that time. He left shortly after ST became successful to pursue a solo career–also a story as old as time. That was when local boy Bryan Adams, at only sixteen, became the front “man” for a short time and he’s featured on Sweeney Todd’s album “If Wishes Were Horses”. It’s considered a very rare album now because not many are still in circulation, or so I’ve discovered. Kind of niche, and only something Canadians, more specifically British Columbians that were teens in 1977 might still fondly remember. For reasons unknown, it’s nearly impossible now to listen online to Bryan Adams’ full version of “If Wishes Were Horses”. Trust me, I did the dive. Bryan’s voice was very different then and not at all the raspy, familiar voice of the eighties and onwards. He also had a solo disco song in his late teens that I used to dance to with friends called, appropriately, “Let Me Take You Dancing”. He had the voice of an angel then, although he may beg to differ now.

I decided one evening at around ten o’clock–the perfect time to make rash decisions–that I needed to get my hands on that old album again for the sake of my writing. Somehow it had written itself into my story and I needed to understand why. I’d already found one available for sale on Etsy that was being sold by a local seller in Vancouver. This person, a woman I later discovered, has very good reviews and a ton of used vinyl sales. It was reasonably priced. It was in excellent condition. It was local. I used to love it. All signs pointed to go! I paid for it and that was that. I was about to shut my laptop and go to bed to read when, almost instantly, I got an email notification from the seller. I thought about leaving it until the morning, but I wondered if there was a problem with the sale. So I read the long message and I was surprised by all of it. Astounded, actually. I decided not to respond until morning in order to process what I’d just read. I stayed awake for a long time thinking about it. About life, about being young, about how our best dreams rarely change, and how we sometimes take the long way to get to where we’re meant to be. And by two in the morning, how just one message can lead to a very long, restless night.

What the seller told me was that she laughed when my album purchase came in late at night because she’d just been coincidentally in my area shopping earlier that same day. It’s funny how life goes sometimes, isn’t it? Yes, it is, we agreed. We’ve had more email conversations since that first one and this is where the story turns from haha to are you kidding me? Turns out she is a writer and music lover like me, who recently started writing again after closing her business, also like me, shortly following the pandemic. She now lives in the very place I am currently writing about–Cultus Lake. We are around the same age and both grandmothers. We love books and vintage finds. She sells her found treasures online, I just collect mine. Oh, and by the way, she was Bryan Adams’ high school girlfriend right before he left to join Sweeney Todd to be on the album I’d just purchased.

I’ll let that sink in…

Early in the morning, two days later, I was getting ready to take a shower when the doorbell rang. A package was left by our Canada Post carrier on the doorstep. Sound familiar? Unlike my character’s gift package that I wrote about several weeks before this day, my gift package was from myself. The “If Wishes Were Horses” album. Tucked inside was a postcard note from the seller giving me her best wishes on my story and a few other personal tidbits I’ll keep to myself. For some reason I was nervous about playing the album, specifically that song. Was I expecting too much? Had this gotten so blown out of proportion that I was romanticizing it into something more than it is? The answer is, it’s everything I needed to hear at exactly the right moment.

When I finally sat down to listen to Bryan’s much younger, angelic voice sing the lyrics I believe he co-wrote at a time when he was probably hoping all of his music dreams would come true, it made me unexpectedly emotional and even more introspective. I thought about my own dreams at fourteen. I saw myself so clearly, listening to this same song. Maybe I was thinking about the singer, imagining who he was because nobody really knew him then. Maybe I was thinking about my grandma too, who used to say the same thing to me. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. I’d lost her at thirteen, yet here she was again in a song. Now, after thinking about it some more, I’ve come to realize that my younger writing self is reminding this current self to keep believing in the creative process, no matter how long it takes to sort the story out. That’s why I’m sharing it now, just in case you need a reminder to keep following your story.

If Wishes Were Horses, Sweeney Todd lyrics

“Come with me you can wish upon a star
You can do all the things that you’ve longed to
And you won’t have to wonder who you are
You can be anybody you want to
In a land full of promises and kings
All your best laid dreams are for catchin’
You can have the world to tie up on a string
Just close your eyes and imagine
If wishes were horses
Beggars would ride
All dreams and desires would ride along side
Worries and troubles would fall off behind
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride

To a land far or near come along
There’s an all new-round everyday glow
Like the young girl sang in the song
‘Somewhere over the rainbow'”

If Wishes Were Horses (featuring Bryan Adams)
Sweeney Todd – back cover photo of Bryan Adams

music

The A Side

Sue

“What’s magical, sometimes, has deeper roots than reason.” 
― Mary Oliver, Blue Horses: Poems

This year marks a milestone birthday for me. I suppose every year is a marker of some kind, first marking our starting point and then where we are now. This new marker has me feeling particularly nostalgic and I’m not sure that would be the case had the events of the past few years gone differently and made me less introspective. In any case, I have a story about nostalgia and it begins with music, yet again.

One Saturday in November my husband and I decided to visit a vintage holiday marketplace. We were there mostly for the retro atmosphere, to get into the festive spirit, and perhaps find some one-of-a-kind gifts. Most of the vendors were selling new and used Christmas decor, and we enjoyed ourselves for an hour or so, laughing over the many antique decorations we recalled seeing in our childhood homes and other people’s harvest gold or avocado green living rooms in the seventies. There was a lot of “do you remember this?” And “my grandma had one just like that!” Items we might have considered tacky as children were now whimsically magical and worthy of a second look. So on we went, browsing here and there, and sometimes gasping in unison at the elevated prices of those same tacky knickknacks. Eventually we grew tired and were heading for the exit door when a small booth caught my eye. It immediately drew me in like a magnet because it was filled with cardboard boxes of used records. That was it, nothing else, and not one sparkly holiday decoration in sight. Just a few portable tables lined with open boxes of vinyl. I flipped through one stack and the first album I happened to pull out for a closer look was Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.

I held it in both hands and read all the song titles, probably with a sappy grin on my face. I have fond memories of that album. I heard it for the first time in an all-girls, junior high school gym class by way of a young and therefore cool female teacher, who played “Don’t Stop” on a portable record player at the start of every class, while we performed warm up exercises to it before heading outside for the long distance run we all dreaded. Even now, hearing that uplifting song makes me think about sideways stretches, jumping jacks, and high kicks in terry cloth gym shorts. Some administrator with a mean streak decided in the second semester to make us fourteen year old girls share gym time with grade twelve boys. They quickly took to stretching with us to Fleetwood Mac and only because our young teacher was attractive. Awkwardness ensued, mostly for the already awkward girls like me, who had no idea where to look and suddenly forgot the sequence of every move. One day the guys had a substitute teacher show up for their class. I heard all about Mr. Hot Teacher ahead of leaving the change room. The second I did, I spotted him and then excitedly called out his first name as I ran across the gym to envelope him in a fierce hug. He was my big brother’s best friend, ten years older than me, who’d first started hanging around our house when I was still in diapers. I didn’t stop to think how it must look to everyone gaping at us. Then I made it worse by loudly announcing in the echoing gym how much I missed him coming over to the house. Let’s just say there were whispers, raised eyebrows, and sidelong glances directed at me during that particular warm up. My brother’s friend and I laughed about it when we saw each other again several years later. Vivid memories like these prove that music is the soundtrack of life. At that time, a magical kind of marker made of shiny vinyl.

Strangely, I considered buying the record while standing in the marketplace booth. It was only five dollars for a bit of nostalgia that made me smile. I couldn’t remember the last time I looked at an LP, much less bought one. Yet there I was still gripping it with both hands, reluctant to let it go. The vendor was a woman about my age and for a moment we warmly reminisced about our favourite rock bands. She told me that she’d hung onto her teenage albums for many years. Then one sad day, she was involved in a highway motor vehicle accident in the Fraser Canyon while in the middle of moving house. Her box of records flew out of the back of her truck on impact and tumbled a long way down to the river at the bottom of a steep, rocky hillside. Lost forever. She said she was physically fine after the accident, but was sure her heart had broken a little that day, just like her records. Over the years since then, she’d rebuilt an even larger vinyl collection, but had far too many now and felt it was time to let some go. My husband was patiently waiting for me, so I tucked Rumours back inside the box, telling her I didn’t have a turntable. She told me that was easily fixable. Is it? I wondered. Then I thanked her for her time and carried on, thinking it might be kind of fun to have a turntable again. Silly, though. Why would I bother when I already had the ability to listen to Fleetwood Mac anytime I felt like it? What was the point of going back in time? Why add unnecessary clutter to a home already filled with too much stuff? So that was that. End of story. Until it wasn’t.

A few weeks later, I was scrolling through online Black Friday deals when I came across a suitcase-style, portable turntable that was similar to the one I used to tote around with me when I was a kid. Only this new modern one was nicer and a much better colour than the plain, two-toned brown one that my parents gave to me one long ago Christmas morning. It was also on sale and a reasonable price by today’s standards for something frivolous. So I purchased it on a whim, then proceeded to forget about it over the days to come while busy gift buying for family and friends. It wasn’t until early December that I received a shipping notification for the purchase. I was surprised how quickly I’d forgotten about it, and then found myself daydreaming about setting up the turntable over the holidays to listen to the small collection of combined records that my husband and I had stored away…somewhere. I told him I remembered seeing them not that long ago, and he laughed at me because he said it had been years since we last saw them. Besides, he was pretty sure we’d sold them at a garage sale or donated them, he couldn’t remember which. I felt like an idiot and my embarrassment must have shown on my face because he made a valiant effort to go searching for what he knew had to be long gone. He wasn’t trying to prove a point. He was hoping that he was wrong about it. That maybe the years had blurred both our memories and somewhere a box was buried like a forgotten time capsule. No such luck. They were gone and I felt unreasonably sad about it. I was being silly again, no doubt about it. Clearly those records had meant little to me or they’d still be hanging around, just like the dusty, treasured books I’ve hung onto for years because I still can’t part with any of them.

So now I had a turntable on its way and nothing to play on it. I kept thinking about the Fleetwood Mac one I’d recently let slip through my fingers. My husband reminded me I could buy records in secondhand shops and even new albums, if I really wanted them. Problem was, I wanted my old ones back. I wanted to remember what I’d once decided to keep, even after there wasn’t a use for them anymore. The special ones. The soundtrack of my youth. But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t visualize the albums that were missing. Soon I realized this wasn’t about the lost records. It was about time moving too quickly to fully comprehend its swift passage. If I could forget about not holding onto those records, what else might I forget in the years to come? I thought about the woman who’d rebuilt her teenage album collection after everything had gone tumbling down a hillside. I didn’t want to rebuild my old collection. I didn’t even really want a new collection. What I was searching for was the girl who used to somehow balance a thick stack of albums under one arm, while also firmly clutching the handle of a suitcase turntable. Somewhere in time, she’s skipping her way to her best friend’s house to share the A side of a new record because every vinyl collector knows the A side has the best and most memorable songs.

As for the new turntable? It got lost in the mail over the Christmas delivery rush. Then it got rerouted and I forgot about it all over again. Miraculously, it showed up on my doorstep on New Year’s Day, of all days. A gift from past me to present me. And a reminder that everything important reveals itself again at exactly the right time.

Don’t Stop by Fleetwood Mac (Official Music Video) Hope the song makes you smile!