Town (or Rather, City) and Country
The year I turned nine years old, the group Starship released their number one hit “We Built This City (On Rock and Roll).” You deserve to be forewarned, if you haven’t heard this song already, that this is an awesomely, an epically bad song. It is, in fact, such a bad song that Blender magazine once ranked it as “the worst song ever” and countless clever and original people have renamed it - wait for it! - “We Built This Shitty.”
But to me, the summer of 1985 and long into the autumn, this song was a revelation. This song provided more shape and substance to my concept of “city” than I’d probably like to admit. When my cousin confessed, sheepishly, to me later that winter that this wasn’t her favorite song anymore, I felt a real and poignant betrayal. I can still remember vividly both where we were and the look on her backstabbing little face as she said it.
But…but we were going to build a city! A city of rock and roll! Don’t you remember?
I was brought up in a very rural area. I lived in the middle of twenty-seven acres of trees, and spent my summers at my grandparents’ place, which was in the middle of eighty acres of trees. I didn’t know how crosswalks worked until the age of 19, and my idea of a fun outing was a trip to the post office, or a trip to the mall in the neighboring town. I never once visited a truly big city until my mother and I took a very strange trip to Cairo, Egypt two years later.
Consequently, for the first decade of my life, I had to invent a lot of my conception of the outside world. I spent a great deal of time wandering through the woods, occasionally with the aforementioned backstabbing little cousin but more often alone, making up stories inside my head. These stories were invariably based on vague ideas culled from snippets of popular culture.
Thus “We Built This City” became source material for the big city of my imagination. It didn’t matter what the song was actually about, what mattered was what I thought it meant. An entire city, made of music! Think of it! Skyscrapers, made of enormous pipe organs! Marching bands in scarlet uniforms with big brass tubas and cymbals and baton twirlers and someone throwing candy into the crowds! Streetlights that hum to themselves! Trains that sing opera! Birds who know nursery rhymes! Calliopes and carousels on every corner! Police officers who patrol the streets in barbershop quartets! Beds that sing lullabies and gently, gently rock you to sleep…
I would walk through the woods imagining these fancies nearly every day for several months. The trees were tall apartment buildings festooned with garlands of musical notes, and the sounds of mother’s Mozart and father’s Hank Williams, Sr. and my Snoopy Christmas album poured through every open window. Imagine it! An entire city, made of music! And I, the benevolent conductor of it all!
I’m still a little bit in awe of the big city. I’m still a little bit of a benign megalomaniac. I definitely still wish the police were more like a barbershop quartet. I still want a bed that sings lullabies, and gently, gently rocks me to sleep.
And I still think it’s kind of a great song.
