Intermittent Transmissions
I was standing at the counter of my local record store, basically monopolizing the entire table as well as the attention of my favorite salesperson. He is my peer and has manned the counter for as long as I have been shopping there, so we practically have the same profession. He also has the whole High Fidelity-Rob Gordon-Championship Vinyl Owner -vibe about him, without the superiority complex or the raging fits, that I know of, and since Nick Hornby’s modern classic is one of my favorite books, I always look for signs that the story in the book is all true, and therefore notice such things.
I had come down to check out birthday gift possibilities for my girl Roberts, and let’s face it, when at a record store, you don’t just get the one record and leave. So, the man was doing his best to help me out.
“So, I mean what do you have in CD format?”
“Oh, I have a bunch of stuff here, in the Used section. Let’s see now.”
I waited, all my stuff spread across the counter, while he whipped up a stack of records for me to inspect. I tried to mind the line behind me and stepped aside if I noticed someone anxious to pay for his or her purchase. After making up my mind, though, I returned to the attentions of the kind proprietor, and because my own purchase was not just one record, it took him a while to type in the codes to get each item out of the system. I sensed, once again, people waiting in line, and glanced over my shoulder.
Standing about a meter behind me, thus giving me an extremely courteous berth to mind my business at the counter, there stood two bearded fellows a little bit older than me. I have always been partial to men with beards; invoking a bit of kitchen psychology I think I associate having a beard with safety and fresh country air and a wonderful personality, since my father has never shaved off his beard as long as I have been alive. My man is a bearded fellow, my dear friend Hanks at work ditto, and were I a man, I would most definitely grow a beard.
Back to my story, though. These two casually dressed men holding a bunch of vinyl albums each seemed to the naked eye like true old-school gentlemen with impeccable manners and an innate gentleness. To top it off, I heard them converse in hushed tones in the language of my soul (kudos to J. Nix, by the way, for coining this wonderful and humorous term).
I turned almost fully around to meet two pairs of the kindest eyes and a bit of curiosity as well, since I was doing my best Bennie and the Jets routine my workmates and loved ones, unfortunately, know well; epic grandeur is just my thing when I know what the hell I’m talking about. Had I met them at, say, a hardware store, they would have faced a panicking shadow of a woman shaking like a leaf, tears streaming down my cheeks because I just could not find the two-by-fours.
Meeting the eye of a total stranger is a very un-Finnish thing to do, and we mostly never even consider it stone-cold sober as a matter of fact, so us, citizens of the world, even I passing off as one this brief instant, recognized a flash of something right there, as I was holding up the line and acting like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I smiled and said, unconvincingly, that I was sorry, meaning the holdup.
“You don’t seem sorry at all”, replied the taller of the two, still smiling.
“No, you are right, I really am not!” I grinned.
“So, what are you buying?”
“Elton John?”
“What records?”
“Oh, everything! Look at all this! Too Low for Zero, Rock of the Westies, Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player - I sometimes submerge into these episodes of monomania where I just dive right into an artist’s work and don’t come out for air until I’m done. And I’m nowhere near done with Mr. John here.”
I had been having a kind of a shit week, with my turntable breaking just as I was about to get down and boogie to Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, and it was looking like the repairs were going to cost a bundle, too.
I had been in and out of a music equipment store all week, taking in piece after piece of cords and knobs and whatnot, hoping I would find the keys to happiness without having to bring in the player itself. I had forgotten how to balance the damn tonearm and weigh the needle, and really did not want to let on I was such an idiotic turntable owner. So I was feeling more and more insecure, frustrated and inferior, along with stupid, hi-fi -simple, and basically like someone who did not deserve her own record player, and, interestingly enough, was starting to develop a strange twitch in my right eye every time I got to the service counter.
There seemed to be something wrong with my phono preamp, and I didn’t want to think just yet about how much and what about all the other cords and knobs I had already replaced without any luck in erasing the horrible buzzing sound. To make a long story short, I was beginning to feel so stressed out over the prospect of having to bite the bullet and maybe even start looking at new turntables that negotiating with the experts at the hi-fi store was slowly turning into a hostage situation.
On my way to my bi-monthly haircut after yet another failed attempt at resuscitating my poor record player I was contemplating tying the damn thing around my neck and throwing myself in a lake to end the misery. As always, though, having my hair trimmed made my day seem that much better. The same man has cut my hair for almost eight years now, and since I seem to be his only woman customer, it is always refreshing and fun to exchange notes; he would recount his skateboarding injuries, a sport I have absolutely no interest in, and I would muse on what films I had seen or books I’d read, both areas he cares nothing about. So mainly, the only thing we have in common is my hair. But no one has ever treated my head with more respect and professional know-how than he has. I have never in eight years left his studio disappointed, and so I was flying high on my neat and fabulous Maverick in Top Gun -do when I touched down at the record store.
The same way we easily forget what a person we are enamored with or attracted to looks like, with only an elated feeling of uncomplicated joy lingering afterwards, my twenty-minute discussion with the gentlemen in line behind me started to immediately unravel and dissolve into a kind of a blur as soon as I stepped back outside the scorching store onto the scorching sidewalk. All I could remember was an impression that something pretty rare had taken place, and a sense of solidarity and kinship and just joyful, enthusiastic connection.
When we are young, the connection is made more often and with considerable ease, even if we feel like it doesn't happen too frequently. But hitting your thirties and onwards - and let's face it, who's thirty anymore? - it gets more and more elusive, and that kind of kismet smack in the middle of running an errand, however pleasant that errand may be, like buying a chunk of CD’s or, ooh precious! a few expensive vinyl albums, feels like a gift from a deity. Like "Yes, I did give you those hardships to deal with just now, but I can also make one of these moments happen."
We discussed Rocketman, naturally, since Rocketman is my default conversation starter with whomever these days, including my more and more reluctant and slightly irritated, bordering on fuming, man in the mornings. You know: "Good Morning, Sweetie-P -- Ooh, Rocketman! Elton John! Talk to you later, bozo, why is there no gap between your teeth? Nothing in my life is fair!" I recounted the times I had seen it in cinema so far, and how I had dressed up as him for a week at work, with the straw hat and the funky glasses, right down to wearing a name tag with the name Elton in case people didn’t get it. Not as unsurprising as one might think, these guys had also seen and loved the movie, so going from there was an easy ride.
Also records in general were discussed, and my haul of the day in particular, all Elton John, since I am neck-deep in the thrall of his music now, and Lorde, since she was my big muse last year when I stumbled on 2017’s Melodrama by accident and after rejecting it a few times decided she was a genius after all, and the Sodankylä Midnight Sun Film Festival, from whence the gentlemen had just returned. I said I know some people, too, who go every year, and the man with the checkered shirt carefully commented on how the Finns there had been true animals with alcohol. I, believing he was putting it mildly, jaded, and a Finn, replied that drinking heavily just means we are breathing, and don’t give us none of your aggravation because it’s seven o’clock and we want to rock. Not that he was, in the slightest.
Right before I lamented to my new friends that I really had to be going lest The Man be knocking on my door with a firing, we finally made each other’s acquaintance properly. The taller of the two held out his hand for me to shake.
“I'm John.”
Now I know it isn’t the most unusual name in English-speaking countries at all; let’s look at, for instance, Johns Lennon, Landis, Carpenter, Hughes, Wick (!) [see my previous story], how Carrie’s great love in Sex and the City turned out to be named John, et cetera, but in that moment, I was so surprised and delighted about our little Elton John bit continuing this far I started to laugh, taking his hand. Turning to his friend with the checkered shirt, I gave it one more go: “So, you must be Elton, then.”
But he was no Elton, but Keith instead, and so it naturally followed that I needed to step up and be both Paul and Pete, thus completing our little circle of Who’s Who in Sixties Rock Music. So, there we were, standing for a while on the shoulders of giants of British Invasion, hanging out at a Finnish record store known for its lack of air-conditioning in the summer.
Leaving them rummaging through Nordic Jazz vinyl section, I stepped on the sidewalk and laughed all the way to work, and I don’t mean any murderous Here’s Johnny! -cackle, either, but some giddy I Just Met Some Wonderful People and Isn’t Life Gorgeous -giggles, and infected both Roberts and Hanks with my uncharacteristically easygoing mood. By the end of the day we were almost hysterical, talking about the Naked Gun franchise and doing impressions of Frank Drebin, and all because I had suddenly become Napoleon on a stranded island during my mid-morning errand run and, indeed, confined for seven and a half hours behind the counter with me, both shrinks turned into tiny French Emperors.
And you know what? For the rest of the day, I didn’t even care about my broken turntable.
Anyway, the thing is, what I really mean is while it is true that one short exchange of words does not a friendship make, the sheer invigoration and energy I got from the brief encounter with these two people, their openness and friendliness, and the ultimate feeling that the connection was real and powerful, floated me right past every unkind remark I got at work this week and any other little mishap I usually respond to with revving engines. I even managed to smile at the Turntable Healer yesterday and thank him profusely when he told me that yes, I was to buy a new preamp if I wanted to keep on rocking my albums and it’ll be a hundred euros please if I wanted to skimp, or two hundred and fifty if I wanted to go pro. I gave him his hundred, and after hooking up my new and improved gizmo to the record player, the first album I put on was Tumbleweed Connection, because I had discussed it with John and Keith at Äx.
Maybe it isn’t so crazy to think friends can be made like this. Stranger things have happened.
Words in italics are Bernie’s.
This story was first posted on this blog under the name Meeting of the Minds.
In memory of Keith How
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