#180
Human Sexual Response
Fig. 14
Genre: New Wave
4.75 out of 5
Highlights:
Guardian Angel
Jackie Onassis
What Does Sex Mean to Me
Requisite 80’s cover: “Cool Jerk”. I love the nerdy, hiccupy version of this song even more than the original.
Spooky action at a distance.
Have you heard of it?
Quantum Entanglement.
I have a theory about it so, here goes. I’ll make it short.
When my daughter died in 2006 something interesting happened. As we were in the midst of sitting shiva, my first post-college roommate, a man I hadn’t spoken to (or even about) in 16 years, suddenly reached out and called me to see how I was. He had some life news he wanted to share and I told him about Liz. He came to Shiva and that was the first contact he and I had in over a decade and a half.
Just a coincidence, though, right?
I didn’t think so. And the reason is because when Liz died I received, also seemingly out of the blue, an email from a woman who meant quite a bit to me as a youth. She and I hadn’t really spoken to each other in about 7 years or so and even then it was cursory. The most meaningful exchanges being when we were both in our teens to early 20s. My affection for her was not entirely reciprocated but it was deep, for me. She influenced the way I saw the world. She was confusing, magical, funny, spiritual and unlike anyone I’d ever met before. One of those people.
Her email was of the “I was thinking about you” sort. And, as I said, it seemed to come out of the blue.
I believe in Quantum Entanglement. I believe in it because it’s science and it’s proven. When two particles become entangled they develop a physical relationship. One spins while the other does not. You can take the spinning one and separate it from its twin, move it to an island 100 miles away or take it to the moon and when it stops spinning, the other one will start.
How do particles become entangled? I think the emotional quotient of the relationship has something to do with it.
So, when my particles were spinning, my friend’s were not. And then, my daughter died. And I believe that my particles stopped spinning (or started, depending on their state). And that caused the spinning of particles in my roommate or the girl.
Hence the outreach.
I’ve been thinking about Quantum Entanglement lately because we are all in a heightened state of emotion right now, being quarantined and I had reached out to the woman to see if she was interested in reviewing the record that she lent me when I was 16, which was, among The Incredibly Shrinking Dickies and Gary Numan’s Telekon, Human Sexual Response’s Fig. 14. After all, that was a really important experience for me. She basically formed the musical taste of my mid teens with those records. Perhaps she had some insights as to why they were important.
So, I reached out. She didn’t respond.
I let it go for a while, until I looked at the spreadsheet and realized that the album was coming up for review and I hadn’t assigned it to anyone.
I asked again if she was interested, perhaps she just missed the message.
This morning, around 5 AM I had a dream about her. The content isn’t important, but it was personal. It wasn’t fantastical. It was almost purely conversation. And walking. It was a gentle dream. It was calm. It was comfortable.
I awoke and thought to myself, “self, if Quantum Entanglement is a thing, I bet you that while you were dreaming of her, she responded to that message.” I reached over, picked up my phone and, lo and behold, at the precise time I was dreaming about her, she wrote to me on facebook, politely declining to do the review as her life is incredibly busy and she didn’t think she would have the time.
It’s impossible for me to be dispassionate about this record. I am entangled with it. And with the person who lent it to me. It has remained a singularly indelible moment for me. And, as life would have it, when I did finally make contact with her about the record, and asked why it was important enough to lend it to me, she had little recollection of the band or the album at all.
Life is irony. And wonderful. And weird.
And so is this record.
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