I guess I’m going to have to blame this one on John Cusack.
Remember that scene from the long-lost land of the eighties movie? The one in Say Anything where John blares Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” from his boom box up to the window of his love?
Well it happened to me–sort of.
Early, early Monday morning before the sun did its westerly jaunt over my house, my eyes fluttered open to a completely alien sound. At first I thought that maybe the television in the other room had gone wild, chastising me for my lack of attention. But no, Good Morning Memphis just couldn’t make a sound like that.
Finally getting my bearings at an hour to which I am completely unaccustomed (well, unless the hour is the tail end of a night before) I realized that the noise wasn’t coming from my house at all. It was outside my window, in the street.
It was a man singing! But for me?!
To lend backdrop to my mild insanity, it’s been a rough couple of weeks. Boo hiss. Ahem.
So I peeked through the blinds half expecting some Fox TV stud of a knight in shining armor, half fearing a psychopathic killer was en route to my door in my groggy state of half-delusion. What I didn’t expect was the sight that would greet me.
Spinning above his head a towel that had been scavenged from my trash, this man, this bluebird of the early morning, was belting out a song of love at a volume that possibly exceeded a Spinal Tap “11.” At this point, the vague hope that my knight had come to claim me subsided.
No, it was not John Cusack. Not even close.
Realizing that fact, and OK, mildly disappointed, I proceeded to run across the house half dressed to make sure that my doors were locked. Then I got back in bed and listened.
“I’ve got LOVE, LOVE, LOVE,” he belted, followed by a few minutes of something unintelligible and then some more “LOVE, LOVE, LOVE.” Truly, this was a Memphis moment.
On the one hand an encounter such as this is somewhat saddening. There’s a great chance that my early morning crooner suffers from some sort of delusion or dementia.
But there’s also the possibility that maybe he’s just inexplicably happy, even if rooting through the trash on a Monday morning. I prefer to see it this way.
I’d rather think that this crazy city of ours dropped this man outside my window to tell me something. Maybe it’s the lesson that even when things are rough, as surely they would be when you’re using props from a dumpster to enhance your stage performance, or curb performance rather, there is still reason to sing.
Nevertheless, I now blame John Cusack exclusively for the brief moment where I thought my life might have become a movie.
That bastard!
