This summer during introductions in an English lit class, a fellow student suggested that I read J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories as a primer for the author.
As I sat reading the last of the short stories in his collection (in a gently-used first edition paperback printed in the summer of 1954), the lyricism of one particular line stood out, emphasized in bold below:
Teddy turned around at the waist, without changing the vigilant position of his feet on the Gladstone, and gave his father a look of inquiry, whole and pure. His eyes, which were pale brown in color, and not at all large, were slightly crossed—the left eye more than the right. They were not crossed enough to be disfiguring, or even to be necessarily noticeable at first glance. They were crossed just enough to be mentioned, and only in context with the fact that one might have thought long and seriously before wishing them straighter, or deeper or browner, or wider set. His face, just as it was, carried the impact, however oblique and slow-travelling of real beauty.
-J.D. Salinger, Teddy
Straighter or deeper or browner or wider. Straighter or deeper or browner or wider. What is that?!
I was singing it softly to myself, in a familiar rhythm that bobbed up and down on the surface of my mind. Then I had it: The Lovecats by the Cure.
I googled the lyrics.
We slip through the streets
-The Cure, The Lovecats
While everyone sleeps,
Getting bigger and sleeker
And wider and brighter
Fascinating. I pondered whether Salinger’s lyricism influenced Robert Smith when he wrote the song or whether my love for the song and it’s lyricism had influenced the way my mind read over Salinger’s words. As I considered this I scrolled down on my phone, just past the lyrics, and immediately wished I hadn’t. Listed there were the questions People also ask generated automatically by Google: “Who sang Love Cats in the 80s” followed by “Who wrote Love Cats?”
Once more, I am confronted with reality of growing older: that, at an alarming rate, the number of people younger than me is continuously increasing. That three generations now live and breathe behind me and that more are coming. And that, while in my sea of memories The Lovecats crests so dramatically on these shimmering blue waters, the swell is so distant from the shore that a curious young Teddy standing on the beach staring at that sea today would have to search the horizon to find it.
I will contentedly confess, though, that while you were busy reading, I did set back out on those waters with my stereo turned up, remembering my youth as it was: the grooviest thing, the perfect dream, when we were all so wonderfully, wonderfully pretty.
It is lovely out here.
