Last night, YouTube offered me up Cyndi Lauper’s “Change of Heart“, a song that comes from – and instantaneously took me back to – about 1986. The music did and I can see your face, you’re not exactly looking surprised. Music does this, of course it does. I don’t know how, but of course it does.
Only, the video didn’t take me back one inch.
That song, and the True Colours album it comes from, are part of my skin but I had never seen the video before last night. I don’t think it’s an especially brilliant one, it’s not that I’m urging you to see it, but I can’t stop thinking about the disconnection of music and video, skin and surface. Each note, each syllable, as familiar as if they were my very own, and the video completely alien.
It was riveting, somehow like suddenly seeing the back of your head and realising you’ve always had a bald spot.
Presumably the video was filmed in 1986 and these people were doing that filming, were performing, no more than shortly before I was first listening to the album. So that video shows reality – I mean, okay, people don’t tend to run over London tourist spots singing, but those spots looked like that then, those crowds were there, this was reality.
And from the perspective of 35 years later, that reality seems so innocent.
It makes me feel old, not least after I just worked out that 35 figure on my fingers, but I can’t decide whether I miss that time or not. Knowing all that was to come after it, I don’t know if would like to be able to step back to then.
I just know that I cannot avoid stepping back when I listen to the music. And that this – to me – brand new video for it has thrown me.
Maybe I’m wondering what the next 35 years will bring and, time being what it is, also thinking of just how soon it will be 2056. I’m definitely thinking about whether we like or dislike music, we assess it now, in the moment we hear it, and we entirely miss that is forever welded to that same moment.
Sometimes I’m wondering whether we can actually assess whether something is good or not, assess it at all, because nothing is entire of itself, everything is bonded to its time. Except screw assessing anything, it works for you or it doesn’t.
Maybe I’m just saying that it would good if everything old were new again.