Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered

KATGUT:
I DO NOT WANT TO LEARN BEAUTY AND THE BEAST!  I DO NOT WANT TO LEARN TWO SONGS TODAY!  I HAVE A VERY LONG DAY AND A SHITTON OF STUFF TO DO TOMORROW!  HOW CAN YOU DO THIS TO ME?

THE VOICE OF REASON:
Do this to you?!  Are you kidding?  This learn-a-song-a-day thing was your harebrained idea, not mine!  I was all for something more reasonable, like a song a week, but you said "noOOOOooo, 'my gut says'  that learning one every single day for a year will fix my playing, and also my life.  You said that one a week wouldn't work, you'd get bored and give up.  I had to agree - you're not disciplined enough to stick with anything for a whole week, so I gave in and figured I'd let you sink or swim.

KG:
You're an asshole, Voice of Reason.  That's why she always goes with what I say in the end.  Maybe if you were nicer, she'd listen to you once in a while. 

VR:
It's hard to be nice when I'm stuck with YOU in HER SLEEP-DEPRIVED BODY!!!

(Long pause, fraught with tension)

KG:
C'mon, we're not getting anywhere.  Can't we compromise?  You have to figure it out, I'm no good at compromising. 

VR:
Ok ok, so we'll look at the music for your rehearsal tomorrow night, and we'll look at the music for that other rehearsal Thursday morning, and we'll learn one song tonight.  And we'll go to bed before 2 a.m., because we're working on a sinus infection. 

KG (not ready for an agreement):
Fine.

VR:
...And we'll learn a song you really like.

KG:
Can I have another graham cracker?

VR (whatever works):
Fine. 

KG (munching on graham cracker):
What song?

VR:
"Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered."  Truce?

(they shake hands)

This is the song that made me fall in love with the Great American Songbook.  I was... fifteen?  It was the middle of summer, the middle of Texas, the middle of a typically humid mid-summer, mid-Texas day.  My sister and I were visiting our aunt, our unmarried, artistically-inclined aunt with the canine children, the one who was stubborn enough to defy a father who was determined that none of his children would study art or any of that non-money-making nonsense (and one who was determined, lest I paint a man I never knew as a villain, that his daughters would have skills to take care of themselves financially).  Oh, and that all his children would be right-handed - two natural righties, two born lefties.  Dad caved, but auntie held her ground (Dad retained his natural stubbornness in every other matter, however).

I digress.  We were eating homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream and helping her around the house.  Ella Fitzgerald was on the CD player on repeat.  It was a languid afternoon; who knows how many times the song went by before the lyric "...and worship the trousers that cliiiiing to him" called my attention.    Ooh, this song is kinda sassy, I thought.  Oh my gosh.  Oversexed.  She said oversexed.  In a song.  WHERE HAS THIS MUSIC BEEN ALL MY LIFE!?

It was the beginning of an affair that is still going strong.  He is dirty and classy at the same time, this canon of popular song.  It took me a really long time - til this year, in fact - to fully own how in love I am and commit to the relationship.  My parents don't really get him.  Mom kinda digs him without really knowing why; Dad flat-out disapproves, but is beginning to come around because he sees how happy this music makes me. 

So, really, I owe this song-jewel-paved path in part to Lorenz "Larry" Hart.  Judging from his life's troubled, truncated exterior, he must've had many inner conversations far more self-lacerating than the one I've been having tonight.  But oh, the lyrics he wrote.  And to Richard Rodgers.  Ever notice how the difference in musical language between what he wrote with Hart and what he wrote with Hammerstein?  The man knew how to set words to music.  And Ella, and her musicians, who knew how to bring words and music to life.  I send a special thanks to her pianist, Paul Smith, for giving me a 7-minute song that contains everything I will ever need to know about accompanying a jazz singer.  When he plays, and what he plays when he plays: as the lyrics get naughtier, the piano fills get bluesier.  Yes. Yes. 

My phone just rang - a friend, a fellow musician with whom I have a mutual agreement to call when one of us is having a hard time with life.  He will understand what I've written tonight.  Thank you, Larry Hart.  Thank you, Richard Rodgers, Ella, Paul, everyone.  Life can be hard, and life is long, or else tragically short; it's a real effing drag sometimes, a drag race in which you always feel behind, or about to wreck, or both.  Thank you for filling in the potholes so beautifully.

KG:
And by the way, Voice of "Reason", I've stuck with something for nearly a year.  It hasn't been perfect, but I haven't given up.  How do ya like that?  (flips VR the bird and walks away)