Logical Wonderful Beautiful Magical

A reminiscence about words . . . and music.

I bought some colorful, sparkly beads with letters on last year. I wasn't sure why at the time, but as it turned out, those beads became friendship bracelets. The first set went to two of my sisters, my niece, and myself. I tried to make those letters into encouraging and loving words: words that would inspire strength and cause happiness when worn or viewed.

I recently bought a new set of beads, because it's amazing how quickly the good letters go from a set. You look down at the start and you have it all: all the words in the Universe can be yours! After a few bracelets, you're missing the E's, the I's, the L's! How to make words out of what's left? Very limited words!

So this is the new set. They are supposedly glow-in-the-dark, and they sorta do, in a gentle way, but not a flashlight-glowing-brightness sort of way. I wanted them to shine. They're nice, but not quite at shine level. I made my brother a bracelet (he's been going through tough times), sent it through the mail with some fudge. Something for the stomach, something for the soul. :-)

It was a winter day and rather gray out. Sort of an inside day. So I played with my words, and the Crittergators wanted to join in. Here is a silly little picture we took, of the bead letters, the Crittergators, and the 45 rpm record from 1979.

I started making words for my own amusement, and these are the words I found myself making: Logical Wonderful Beautiful Magical. They are from a song by Supertramp that I was absolutely fascinated by when it came out in 1979: the Logical Song. The 45 came in a wrapper that had these and a whole bunch more cool words on it. I claim these four for me!

When my big sister Barb was alive, we talked about getting butterfly tattoos. Just something small, maybe on my ankle. Barb actually did get one, on her back, but she died before they could fill it in with all of the colors. I never got one. Now, I don't plan to. I would have done it with her and for her, but somehow now it all seems moot.

My husband laughs at me. He says I can't even wear the same clothes from day to day; how would I ever want something permanent placed on my skin that I cannot remove or change if I grow tired of it? I don't know if that's true or not, but the butterfly tattoo moment has passed. I do temporary ones, different colors, from time to time. That's enough for me.

Instead, I am making words to wear. Words to put on my wrist and look at and read, and be encouraged by. I can think of a bunch more words. I am planning to place another order for beads. Actually, I liked the first kind better - they were bigger and more colorful - and so I will plan to order more of those.

Be careful of the words you use, the words you wrap yourself in. If the words you spoke out loud today - or wrote in a comment to an Internet posting - were written on your skin, would you still be beautiful? Words can harm. Words can heal. Words can put down. Words can lift up. 

Oh, people. Please be careful with your words. Words are powerful. Try to make them beautiful. Try to make them kind. It is so easy to wound; so hard to heal. And no matter what you say, you cannot take them back.

I have TWO soundtrack songs. One is the Logical Song, by Supertramp. The other is Words, by the Bee Gees; here is the original, a version with Dolly, and a making-of video with Dolly that's fun.

Sidebar: A personal reminiscence. . . . While putting this blip together, I also had some thoughts about how my own experience of music has changed over the years. These days, I can buy a single song digitally on Amazon for a little more than a dollar; I think about a dollar is what I paid for most of my 45's back in the day (though technically a 45 gives you TWO songs; there's one on the other side, but typically it's a throw-away tune). Do you remember when the song you wanted wasn't available as a single, and you had to buy THE WHOLE ALBUM just to listen to that one song? Yes, I do!

The experience of listening to music now can be very individualized, and very private, with headphones or ear buds. But back when I was a child, the experience of listening to music was very public: I had to play this record on the turntable in the family living room, which meant that everyone else in my family (there were 8 of us in that tiny house) was subjected to it. I was limited in how loud I could play it, and by the patience of everyone else in how many times I played it. 

I also had to listen to everybody else's music: my dad's Johnny Cash, and Charley Pride, and Don Williams, all heavy on the bass; my mom's Rose Colored Glasses; my big sisters' Bee Gees, and The Eagles' Hotel California, and the Grass Roots, and poetry by Rod McKuen (The Gypsies all belong to me . . . at night, anyway). These experiences have made me who I am, musically speaking. I laugh to think of myself as the child in the Walt Whitman poem: There was a child went forth. . . . only with music, not objects.

I did have a tape recorder at the time, which I used primarily to record songs off the radio. I listened to Casey Kasem counting them down on the American Top 40 every Saturday morning, and recorded my favorite songs that way. The tape recorder had a little single earphone I could attach to it by a string. The sound wasn't grand, but it could be private, if I wanted. (And yes, I wanted: I used to sit and listen to Andy Gibb on repeat in the bedroom, longing for the day when he would find and fall in love with ME.) I also had a Donald Duck AM/FM radio, with a similar single earphone attachment. I can't find it now. I can't remember where it went; maybe the battery went bad, and ruined it, and I threw it away? These things are lost in time.

As far as moving-around music goes, you could listen to the radio in the car, or an eight-track in the car, and eventually cassettes in the car, and then even CDs in the car. But there wasn't any WALKING-AROUND music until Walkmans and boom boxes. I did not have truly portable walking-around music until I got my first mini cassette player with headphones, which happened in the early 80s for me; I walked all around Penn State listening to that thing (a lot of John Denver, as I recall; Seasons of the Heart had just come out in Feb. 1982; I started school that August). I borrowed a boyfriend's boom box when I went off to college. Blasted the song Every Breath You Take on it, when it came out in 1983. Sang along with Johnny Cougar; oh, it hurt so good. Jumped rope to American Fool in the dorms, got in trouble (I was on the 4th floor of Runkle, in North Halls; guess what, the people beneath me didn't like it!), got a reprimand from the resident assistant, had to stop. :-)  And every song she listened to, that song . . . she became.