MY INDO-SOUNDTRACK

Dearest Friends,

I don't know how it is for you, but most all of my important memories have a soundtrack that goes along with them.  For instance, when I think of my wedding, I hear my sister and her band singing Let's Bungle in the Jungle, in honor of my heading off to Indonesia with my new hubby.  When I think of college, I hear myself singing my little heart out along with Carol King, Carly Simon and Eric Clapton. I also see John taking me to Austin honky-tonks, to hear "a new kind of country", and wishing I knew how to two-step.  But, in the background, thanks to the all-girl choir I was in and their frequent trips to entertain at military bases, there is the dark, eerie thrum of acid rock and the whop-whop-whop of chopper blades that I associate with Viet Nam.  These soundtracks, when looked back upon from a distance, are clearly divided into  eras, each with a certain aura or feel to it.  One such division occurred while we were living at Anyer Beach.  From here, it is easy to see that the year we got married, 1975, was a cusp -- a turning point -- and it would all be downhill after that.

When we stopped in Singapore on our honeymoon, John took me to a record store.  Copyright laws were different over there, and John told me to thumb through all the albums, pick out five or six that I liked, then they would record them all onto a tape that I could listen to on John's huge reel-to-reel player -- all for less than it would probably cost to buy one single album back in the states.  I forget now who all I put on that tape, perhaps some Loggins and Messina or Jerry Jeff Walker, maybe some Diana Ross or Mommas and Pappas?  But there's one I remember for certain -- Barry White.  He alone has become the soundtrack for my time at Anyer Beach. I can still remember, clear as a bell, that deep, sexy voice, wrapping itself around me, caressing me, as I sat out on my little front stoop each evening, door ajar, straining for the sound of John's tiny Honda, chugging its way home.

A few months later John brought home an issue of Time or Newsweek.  In it there was an article about a new dance craze called "The Hustle."  The article included step-by-step instructions on how to do it, including a pull-out diagram with footprints on it, which we put down on the tiny bit of floorspace we had next to our bed.  We were oblivious at the time, of course, but that was the day everything changed...the day someone lifted the needle off of the soundtrack of our courtship, and replaced it with a new one -- one called "Disco."