Meandering Through A Bitter Sweet Melancholy

I was listening to my Johnny Crawford play list on YouTube while cataloging new Spanish language books I am adding to the library collection for the dual language students. As I was typing along filling in all the necessary information to make a "clean" MARC record for the library online catalog, I started feeling a bit of that bitter-sweet melancholy with which I am sometimes afflicted when I listen to the "old" songs from the '50s and '60s. It is not a depression, but a profound feeling of loss: a sadness that brings a lump to the throat, a weight to the heart, and sometimes a moistness to the eyes. I have noticed that this melancholy occurs more often as I have passed "middle age" and am speeding toward the end. Usually, when this phenomenon starts to take hold of me, I stop listening to the '50s and '60s pop and rock and roll and rescue my mental health by fleeing to my classical or movie theme playlist. (Bach is stupendous for the uplifting of the spirit and the recreation of the mind.) Silence doesn't help much as the songs and the memories they have conjured linger like fog.

I did not try to escape this time. I started replaying multiple times some of the songs like "Living in the Past" (1963), "When I Fall in Love" (1963), and "Lonesome Town" (1962). (I have always been a sucker for a good ol' ballad.) While I listened, my cataloging became slower as my mind meandered from one thought stream to another.

For some reason known only to my subconscious mind, I replayed Crawford's version of "Moon River" again and again until I could hear it without playing it. I like most of the versions of this song by Andy Williams and others. Even Audrey Hepburn's Breakfast at Tiffany's version has its charm. But Johnny Crawford's rendition has become my favorite. As the old melancholy crept over me, I began a metacognition (good education buzz-word) about why these old songs from my youth tend to affect me this way.

As my mind flitted pell mell from one thought stream to another, I settled on Breakfast at Tiffany's, the film for which "Moon River" was written. I pondered the fact that all the actors in Breakfast at Tiffany's, excepting Mickey Rooney and maybe Beverly Powers, are dead, and many of them died at a younger age than I am now. And I am not old. This is true as well of many friends and family members who were around when Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini won the 1961 Oscar for best song for "Moon River."    "... Must give us pause ..."

My thoughts skipped over to the play Our Town, specifically the third act when the newly deceased Emily Webb goes back to a point in her life to relive a happy day. I played the part of the Stage Manager in Our Town when I was a senior in high school.* This play used to be, and may still be, a staple of high school drama departments performed by adolescents who couldn't possibly understand the painful depths of the third act, having themselves such little personal past and a paucity of experience to reflect upon. The Stage Manager warns Emily that going back to experience a day, even a good, happy day will be more pain than joy. No, Emily, you can't go back, even in reverie, and have a completely happy time. Even a good, happy day is shrouded with a thin veil of sadness. The moment is gone; the time, the place, and the people are gone.

The memory is sweet, but the reality is bitter. The two mingled together is a heady mix. I am addicted to it, but if I want to accomplish anything of worth, I must not indulge too often. Ah, time for an antidote.

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*Ten years later, while working at BUY as the Pardoe Theatre stage manager during a production of Our Town, I was an emergency four-performance stand-in for the part of the constable. The actor had a death in his family, and I was the only one who was tall enough to wear his costume. The other cast members were worried I would ruin their production; they knew me only as a stage tech and not as an actor. (I did receive rave reviews from the director during cast notes before my second performance.)