To My Valentine: A Love Note to Books, Movies & Music
For My Valentine, Bobby Crace. Written by Maya Contreras, Editor-in-Chief, The DDD Books are everywhere in our house. They are of course on our three bookshelves (which currently out numbers our furniture, the books have more places to sit then Bobby and I do). They’re on our bathroom floor, on our couch, on top of the refrigerator, and on our window ceils. Bobby always has at least two in his backpack and I always have one for the subway or several on my iPad.
Our books are very different. Non-fiction is my necessity and Bobby is almost strictly fiction. Maya Angelou’s Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now sits snuggly between John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces and Philip Roth’s Portney’s Complaint. Bell Hooks’ All About Love: New Visions stares defiantly at Charles Bukowski’s Ham on Ray and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. James Joyce’s Finnegins Wake looks loving from the shelf knowing he will be read again and again by Bobby for the hundreth time.
The only book that Bobby and I mutually have copies of is Joseph Campbell’s Power of the Myth. A book that is very special to the both of us for various reasons.
Bobby regularly hands me books he thinks I might enjoy. This morning he handed me Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler - pulling it back momentarily to caution me. “Babe, can you please not destroy it like you do your books? I don’t want this to look like Zadie Smith’s Changing My Mind, OK?”
He has every right to be concerned.
Zadie Smith’s book sits tattered on the couch, a sign that I thoroughly enjoyed it. I take my books into the bath tub, where the humidity ruffles the pages. I fold their corners without mercy to remember my place, and have dropped more then one cup of coffee on almost every book I’ve ever read.
Many of Bobby’s books on the other hand are collector’s items. He has a few first additions; he has various copies of the same book with different book jacket designs. He does on occasion put notes in the margins of his books, but always with pencil, so he can erase the evidence of his remarks later. Bobby has commented a few times on my numerous possession of Biographies. I answer him simply: “I want to know about other peoples lives.” I am always so curious about life and how others manage to navigate theirs.
While I am drawn to non-fiction on the page, I am drawn to fiction in films, the more fantastical - the better. Please don’t think me to be immodest**, but my collection of films could rival any film critics. I exclusively credit that to my grandfather, who long ago sat me down to watch everything from Charlie Chaplin to Federico Fellini to Ingmar Bergman. He would relish explaining their influences and those whom they influenced.
I enjoy sitting with Bobby on the couch and showing him movies he’d admittedly never seen before: George Cukor’s A Philadelphia Story, Woody Allen’s Zelig, and The Marx Brother’s Duck Soup. When I share these films with Bobby, I feel like my grandfather is rejoicing somewhere in the heavens that he could share his love of films with my true love.
While my knowledge of films is strong, my ability to play music, its structure, or even lyrics is not. While I regularly botch lyrics to songs I sing (badly) outloud in the living room – “In his post lady gloom, Broccoli Rooooooob, they’re too old to fly!”
“What the hell are you trying to sing?” Bobby asks me with a laugh.
“A Jethro Tull song.” I said, “Why what are the lyrics?”
“I think you are trying to sing ‘To Old to Rock and Roll, To Young to Die.’ How you got ‘Broccoli Rob, They’re Old To Fly’ out of that, I’ll never know.”
“It’s a gift.” I tell him.
Literally thousands of music sheets are lined up behinds his piano. His favorite guitar sits in the living room so he can play it anytime he enters. Like an admiring fan, I ask him to play a song. “What do you want to hear?” He says reluctantly, knowing that once he starts I will adamantly ask for another song, after another. “Django Reinhardt, anything by Django!” I say - childishly jumping up and down. Every time he plays a song, I am still in awe that he knows how to do that. He doesn’t fake instrumentation like I did all those years ago playing drums in a few punk bands, no; he knows the notes, the theory, and yes, the lyrics. Happy Valentines Day.
**A line from Tim Robbins’ Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.
Two dozen tulips (my favorite flower) from my Valentine
