OLIVIA CRONK / THE BOBBIES
It was maybe 1987, maybe 1986, sometime/somewhere in there, it was definitely a winter evening, it was definitely an errand with my father, it was definitely “You Are My Special Angel,” on the oldies station, but it may have been Bobby Helms (1957), Bobby Vinton (1963), or The Vogues (1968). It was likely not Slim Whitman (1987).
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In a video (1981) of a performance of “Janitor,” by (post-)punk band Suburban Lawns, band members say that their songs are simple rags: gestures at an “outmoded sensibility.” This particular song relies on mutated language/mishearings/word-slippages.
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Judy, did he know? Judy did he know Judy. Did he know he was making a memory-experience, a low-down fog landscape in which to valley the “music of silence” (Wilson Harris): “the music of silence within contrasting tone and light and shadow as they combine to ignite in oneself a reverie of pulse and heart and mind.” Judy did tone and oneself combine.
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In maybe 1987 or 1986, on a snowy winter evening, I ran an errand with my father. I can’t say now what the errand was, though I can recall the kinds of things we did: stopped in at the wake of the mother of his friend Bob, picked up unknown to me items from other people’s apartments and garages (weed? sometimes objects for projects and repairs?), ran out to get needed household items (he could sneak in a cigarette on the ride, then).
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Ok, hear now a lizard tail. Hear it in its silent music silent movie light shadow music hear tail. Impossibly: it moves it movies in and out of the opheliac mouths of people at a séance; it moves in a circle; its tail is woven & binding them & their little o mouths up & woven & binding to the tin-tiled ceiling;
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If I can touch language’s silent exchange I can touch interior. I can go to it.
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Judy: in a sunny parking lot. Judy in a bolo tie with a long matte silver rectangle that gets the sun. Judy jangling her car keys in an outmoded sensibility. Judy hearing a little scrap of one woman saying to another “in my opinion.” Judy thinks: I saw my friend’s wife enter the foyer of the apartment building down the block.
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Is this a mystery story? Is this a labyrinthine thing in its cawing?
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My father’s favorite movie (and, most days, what I would probably offer as my own) was Night of the Living Dead (1968). I don’t know if he just liked that crackling web of the gothic, B-movie aesthetics, and doom-gloom—or if he more liked the sociocultural metaphora (the symbol-carriage) of it all. For me, it’s the whole fucking effect. I love all of the elements, in gritty impossible collage. I have likely watched this movie twenty times, in large part because I teach it to my English 101 students, but do I do that just so that I can visit with my collage/so that I might phone in to my séance?
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And every time I teach-watch the movie, there are new things to adore. One thing never ever wears out: a guy who has been zombie-fied, wearing a white button down shirt, kinda messed up, like he was supposed to be in a tuxedo, like he just zombied out on a musical performance at somebody’s wedding, and then ran off the stage and into the woods, and he’s got black hair and eyeliner and he clutches his chest quite sadly, and for no good reason this reminds me of my father the time he dressed up as Dracula. He put powdery white makeup over his acne-scarred cheeks. He wore a black turtleneck, a cape, fake teeth, blood drip paint.
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This is not, by the way, a sad or hard story, except that my father is dead now.
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After the parking lot, Judy entered the private showroom. Judy did tone and oneself combine.
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My melancholy is too fragile to explain. I want to go into mystery and I am sad for it. If I can touch the language exchange as if I if I were Judy in the bolo tie.
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“You Are My Special Angel” is a sweet ass little song, any way you cut it: all the Bobbies, though, they’ve written the book on that thing. I hope it was one of the Bobbies in 1987 or 1986 or whenever it was, in the winter, in the evening, parking the car down the block a bit, a short walk back to our two-flat, the home at which my father and I would hang our hats upon return.
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Aim suffering hands into it: lift a wet grey fleece glove from hot egg water.
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Honestly, even Slim Whitman’s version (1987) is pretty affecting. The song, written by one Jimmy Duncan, is maybe not so unusual, as far as those dreamy 50s love songs go—and there are likely many others that are more musically interesting. In fact, relistening has reminded me of so many of those oldies station favorites that I so warmed to as a kid. If my parents actively promoted music to us, it was always in the neighborhood of Neil Young, but my father and I did love what I might now call the Ducktail Gothic: teenage death songs, car crashes, anxious warbling love, flipped up collars, cool cats, one-eyed jacks, something kinda Piper Laurie-ish about all this, Natalie Wood, of course. & the pop cultural mood of the mid-late-80s reflected these notions back to me, as well. I wore bobby socks. I fetishized poodle skirts. I wore my ponytail soda shop teen style. & then the grandma-ish pastels of the day massaged it all into place, too. And I do, do I ever, return to this mood, over and over again. In the early 2000s I had a terrible job and the drive was long but I filled it with this now defunct radio station that was just popping with all these Ducktail Gothic songs. It was a séance with my father. I took to heavy black eyeliner. The car I drove was red. I wore black tights and lots of shirts with collars. Just popping, man.
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But then again maybe Piper Laurie belongs in a 60s Garage Rock kind of world/mood and not in Ducktail Gothic.
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Phil and I were going to write something called Gothic Elvis but then we didn’t know what exactly we wanted to say. But I think maybe that dreamy white shirt guy, the zombie, goes with Gothic Elvis.
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And a lot of 60s Garage Rock goes with 50s Ducktail Gothic. Loud fuzz, under the soft angry influence of tEEnage, looking with dripping crumbs out of skittery eyes, upon an indifferent world.
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Did he know the memory production valley private showroom did he know a rope of did he know know.
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Just two Bobbies coming home from a winter evening errand. Listening to the radio, enjoying a smoke.
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Definitely winter, Chicago, mid-late-80s, under the influence of oldies radio station programming, definitely the way it feels to blast the heat in a little front cab of a truck, with your dad. “You Are My Special Angel.”
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I go into a place behind gladness: a striped tee shirt, Sue “Su Tissue” McLane (of Suburban Lawns) growl-hum-singing “Man the Manipulator” but like “mun-ip-yule-uh-door,” I go into Judy, I am in the rope of it. A rope of did he know. A silver rectangle bolo. Tie. Behind gladness. When I say I have an idea I mean I have an aesthetic sensation I wish to express.
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Judy jangles her car keys.
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It’s the sappiest thing in the world: my dead father, appealing to all of history’s bullshit with daddies and daughters, but also appealing to true and wonderful parental love, turns up the volume on “You Are My Special Angel.”
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Do I just want to visit with my collage?
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Tinkering, as my form. In my opinion. My friend’s wife.
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He was making a memory-experience, a fog in which to music the music of silence and tone and in oneself a reverie of Judy combine.
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It was maybe 1987, maybe 1986, sometime in there, it was definitely a winter evening, it was definitely an errand with my father, it was definitely “You Are My Special Angel,” on the oldies station, but it may have been Bobby Helms (1957), Bobby Vinton (1963), or The Vogues (1968).
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A séance that is a lizard tail winding in and out of people’s mouths, a round table, round as music, round as suburban lawns in 60s TV in striped tee shirts: when I say an idea I mean I am going to go into the corrupted land of hand.
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He used his fog hand to turn up the volume on “You Are My Special Angel,” probably a cigarette dangling, wintertime, behind gladness.
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It’s the sappiest thing in the world. And every time I revisit this memory this movie, right there,
definitely winter, Chicago, mid-late-80s, under the influence of oldies radio station programming
definitely “You Are My Special Angel”
a zombie guy clutching his heart
my dad, his winter jacket, over just a white undershirt, his cigarette hanging, the Bobbies singing it all out in the little cold/warm cab of the truck.
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I’m worried about nostalgia. See it as toxic. Authoritarianism’s wicked trick-arm. But still I can’t help but to be interested in it in terms of “primal sympathy” (William Wordsworth). I think that many contemporary musical acts can be understood as doing nostalgia cosplay: Lana Del Rey, War on Drugs, sometimes Andre 3000, Beach House.
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When Lana put “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” as the last song on her torch-singer-California-noir-(meets-Elena-Ferrante’s-girlish-Lenu) album Honeymoon, she understood the alchemy of rubbing things together. We can hear her rip off Nina Simone (and it’s definitely a fucked up whiteness-thing), and we can “hear” The Animals and go-go boots and Raymond Chandler and Lauren Bacall and all of it, like information cast through tissue paper. I want to figure out a way to say that nostalgia cosplay is an act of collage. And that collage is the insanely narcotizing pull of the corrupt land of hand.
At least that: collage is the narcotizing pull of the corrupt land of hand.
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Judy was in the parking lot. Judy jangled her keys. But that part’s not on the surveillance videos.
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My father definitely said that that song was about me and I definitely believed him. I knew it was just us two Bobbies out there in the 80s Chicago winter evening running our errands. Nobody’s business but our own.
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Judy entered a private showroom. Judy did tone and oneself combine. As she reached her suffering hand toward the rope.
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Then my father definitely turned up the volume on the song that was about me.
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She reached her suffering hand toward the rope. A rope of did he know. Does someone know they are making a memory experience a rope of it to yank down pull a projection screen down a dreamy gloomy zombie just your dad fooling around in his white makeup acne-scarred cheeks a rope of did he know how did Judy come to be in this private showroom and see these things.
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It was us Bobbies out there. Running errands. And then it was time to park the car, head upstairs, return to the land of the living—lamplight & sibling & mother & bedtime & TV sound.
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It’s like information cast through tissue paper.
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I want to figure out a way to say that nostalgia cosplay is an act of collage. And that collage is the insanely narcotizing pull of the corrupt land of hand: and do I want that I do. A rope of memory of collaged memory of night of the living snow you are a total Judy you are my special angel you jangle your keys on a rope of did he know he was making a memory experience.
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Is this, after all, by any stretch, a mystery story? Is this a labyrinthine thing in its cawing?
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We see Judy on video in the parking lot, a bolo tie in the sun, the shimmering rectangle a miniature copy of the lot then the private showroom’s door. Metal mini-blinds jangle on the door. Judy inserts a metal rectangle into a slot and the rope emerges. An oldies station is playing. Judy did tone and oneself combine.
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I definitely had on a suitable winter jacket of my own. Somehow though the song brought even colder weather. My father, his cigarette dangling, took off his green jacket in the green truck while special angel. While special angel. You are. My. Winter. Blood dripping cigarette dangling get to shelter after the zombies and tripping traipsing in a graveyard. Black tights. Séance.
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Collages are the work of the corrupt land of hand.
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Séances are the work of the collage and its behind-gladness doorway: tone and oneself combine. Judy’s own bolo tie swaying with the mini-blinds.
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My father said that that song was for me, my father needlessly (yes, again, here history and chauvinism and the kinds of corny gestures that all those later-on boys pulled on me and that made me a bit sick to my stomach) but lovingly, so very truly lovingly, took off his jacket (which, when it was hanging on the dining room chair, I’d climbed into dozens of times before, but wearing my nightgown), said that “You Are My Special Angel” was a song about me, had a cigarette dripping from his mouth, a friendly Chicago vampire, a tiny bit stoner, a lot bit Old Style beers, took off his jacket and laid it over me, like I was some kind of zombie movie garage rock ducktail gothic Royalty.
Olivia Cronk is the author of WOMONSTER (Tarpaulin Sky, 2020), Louise and Louise and Louise (The Lettered Streets Press, 2016), and Skin Horse (Action Books, 2012). With Philip Sorenson, she co-edited The Journal Petra (on hiatus).