Story # 10: "You and Oblivion" -Robyn Hitchcock

Something about you...you and oblivion

For some reason I skipped ahead two stories so I'm doubling back with this one today.

Some memories are long and involved, others are snapshots. My snapshot memories are just as important and preserved in amber in a museum inside my head and there are little speakers next to each memory so that if you take a self-guided tour, you can plug in and hear the soundtracks that accompany them.

Like this one:

In ninth grade (I think) I was on one of those overnight field trips for marching band as I played percussion. We were going to Nashville and we were driving through Kentucky in pitch dark and I had a window seat and saw this lone farmhouse in silhouette, illuminated by the moon. The soundtrack was Robyn Hitchcock's "Swirling."

Or this one:

Driving endlessly around our suburbs after the last of the four musketeers got his permanent driver's license. The soundtrack was Groovy Decoy (not to be confused with Groovy Decay--that was the overproduced sounding album whereas Groovy Decoy, released later, were the demos. Infinitely better in my opinion.)

At any rate, this is a way of saying Robyn Hitchcock might at first seem like an odd choice for the soundtrack of your life, as the man sings about eggs and fish and songs about his wife and his dead wife so you know, it's not what one would call a perfect fit.

Yet Hitchcock is one of the more impressive storytellers and songwriters alive today and for every eccentric pervy goof like Wafflehead, he'll lay down some gut-wrenchingly emotional songs, too. See "Glass Hotel" for just one reference of many including the hypnotic "You and Oblivion."

The lyrics are as with many of Robyn's best ones, cloaked in imagery and death. The opening stanza is stunning.

All of the colors ran out
'Round mid-November-o
We was a-scuttle about
Do you remember-o
You left your radio on
With berries all over it
When all the music was gone
You were in mauve a bit

The song references the deaths of parents, November's dying leaves, and slipping away. Perhaps the person Robyn is singing to (in past tense) has slipped into oblivion, was well. It's like eavesdropping on a fragmented, yet poignant conversation.

I didn't have a specific memory assigned to "You and Oblivion," so I decided to write a story instead. In the story "You and Oblivion," a teacher is celebrating the first night of her retirement, no longer being forced to babysit petulant kids who have implants in their heads which require them to "learn," thereby rendering her job (and their ability to reason) obsolete.

We're sort of there already, aren't we? No need to remember when you can google or get on Wikipedia. Instant answer, but with no reasoning behind it. Everybody knows everything except they don't know anything because they've lost the art of communicating, friendly debate, etc.

Despite this notion, "You and Oblivion" is actually an optimistic post-apocalyptic story. And while a lot of "A-Sides and B-Sides" comes across as being skeptical of technology, including this one, it also suggests technology might save us in the end and bring us back to oblivion, which isn't death but bliss. I suppose in a sense it's an environmental story but the last thing I want to do is preach to anyone; there are enough activists out there. I just want to tell stories and if the reader sees something in it, or reads something in it, good for them.

A-Sides and B-Sides is available on iBook as well as Amazon and also Kobo and Nook. You can preview a nice chunk of it, too. Hope you'll consider buying if you like what you see. Here's what the cover looks like.

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The guitar is as hypnotic as his voice. By the way, if you ever get a chance to see Robyn Hitchcock live, do so. It's worth the price of admission just for his surreal on-stage banter alone. But the songs sound fantastic live.