JOURNAL EXCERPT: April 28, Fri 1978 7:55 PM Part 2

The journal entry on this date was long, so this is part 2...

"I also recorded [on a cassette] a Bugs Bunny record that Mom says she used to listen to when she was little. I had to switch the speed to 78 and the needle to 78 records to record all these records. I forgot to switch the needle on the first two and had to record them over. I also recorded just a bunch of old 78s my mother used to listen to: 'Rhapsody,' 'Charleston.' God, that's all I can remember. I hadn't heard of almost all of them. The record with 'Rhapsody' on it was unique. It is called a picture record and was blue with an overhead view of a white piano and two women in white gowns sitting at the piano, on both sides. It was difficult to tell where the grooves started and ended."

"I'm reading A Death in the Family by James Agee. It's very realistic. The man had extreme power with words. I wish I could write as well."

MANHOOD REDO: In the age of the iPod, it's hard to take in the physicality of these records. I have a vague memory of the 'Rhapsody' record and it was stunning. The blue was that pure blue you see in a mountain lake. A--, my wife, misses the artwork that used to accompany records; the 'Rhapsody' artwork didn't accompany the album, it was the album.

I don't quite understand my mother's relationship with music. As a girl, she studied to be an opera singer, although she was pushed in that direction by my grandmother, who wanted it to be her ticket to security and status, I think. She chose to marry my father instead, giving up any pretensions of pursuing a musical future. I remember her listening to albums during my youth; two artists come to mind: the Jackie Gleason Orchestra and Tom Jones. And she used to sing fairly regularly, with what seemed to me a beautiful voice. I was not blessed with her singing genes but instead inherited my father's. During my teen years, I would passionately sing along with the records playing on the stereo in my bedroom, and everyone outside the room would make fun of me.

I imagine Mom in her bedroom playing what were at the time popular records like 'Rhapsody,' and not opera records. Sometimes I think about what it would have been like if she had had a passion for opera, if she had both married my father and insisted on pursuing an operatic career. How would my life as a boy have differed, how would my masculinity be different?