'Song for Zula': Song #2 from the Boundless soundtrack
To kick off BOUNDLESS, my newly published memoir, I offer you a song about letting yourself be transformed by how you love.
Every symphony has a leitmotif, every movie has a “love theme.” The love theme of BOUNDLESS is “Song for Zula” by Phosphorescent.
The opening captures the clamor of a flock of migrating snowgeese, come to winter with us for one last season before the twins will leave for college to anywhere-but-here.
The soaring keyboards and thrumming base reverb through the story as the twins try to catch the wind and take flight—and I try to slow them down.
Suddenly, after a tragicomic scene of teenage backtalk, it hits me. I am the reverb. I am the beat pulling them back. And now it’s time to stop pulling back. They’re flying the nest, and it’s time to let them soar.
Yes, and. I am the rush of air beneath their wings. I am the cause of all of this. And I can let go.
EXCERPT FROM BOUNDLESS
“Here, let’s just listen to some music while we wait,” she said.
Grace walked to the living room and turned on Pandora on the
Apple TV. A song came on with soaring synths, a flock of birds
lifting out over the desert floor, embarking. A bass reverb echoed
through the song, holding back the flight. The reverb called me—
to my pain, to the scars of their childhoods, to how much it hurts
to be a mother, how much it hurts to love someone who is leaving,
and leaving this way.
“You see the cage, it called,” the song went. “I said, come on in.”
“‘Song for Zula,’” Grace said when I came out to the living
room and stood staring at the screen, “by Phosphorescent. One
of my covers.”
That song, I thought. Her voice had been in my ears across
every mile of the desert and up into this forest. I hadn’t known
what to name the melody, had never thought to ask who did it
before my daughter sang it, only knew it through her voice. “Of
course,” I said with a lump in my throat. “I like your version
better.”
At this point in the story, Grace fires off one of her best lines. The real Grace is dubious when I tell her I get such a kick she said this. But she appreciates that I roll with her sarcasm about anything around the scorching teenage backtalk of her twin brother—which is what has just happened in this scene. I’m desperately trying to get us to still be a family on one last spring break before they head to college. I’m understanding that when they graduate from high school, it will be a referendum on my parenting.
It’s not going well.
The setting is Palomar Mountain in southern California as we leave.
EXCERPT from BOUNDLESS
AS I ROLLED OUR LUGGAGE to the car, Grace rushed up
beside me on the deck to whisper in my ear. “Mom, you raised an
asshole.” This did not help.
We managed to agree to take one more loop up to Palomar
observatory before we headed down the mountain. The possibility
of seeing the ocean still dangled before us. There seemed to be
enough time left in the day.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Paul said from the back seat as we passed
Mother’s Kitchen and all the bikers.
Nearing the peak, it came to me. Like that song, I was the reverb, the beat pulling them back. They were the flock of birds,
about to achieve gliding altitude. This was the letting go. This was
what it looked like.
“I want to tell you something,” I said, and I remembered that
day I prayed for them to come to me, for my two lost babies to
come back and inhabit my womb. “You’re both so intent on leaving,
and you’re focused on your future. It seems like you’re struggling
against me. But the absolute truth is that I have the same goal
you do. I have been preparing all of your lives for you to leave me.
If it feels like there is a benevolent force helping you go, I want
you to know that that is me. That’s been my job for the past seventeen
years. I’m not fighting you. I’ve been helping you leave me
all along.”
A peace settled over the car. When we arrived at the white-domed
observatory, both twins hugged me.
I see this song as beautifully capturing the way that when we truly, deeply love, we are disfigured. We become something else, a form we couldn’t have been otherwise. We are altered physically and psychologically, and the love we gave leaves us bearing scars. (In my case, I have a C-section scar.) If this be love, then so be it. That’s my badge of honor. It means I loved.
BOUNDLESS has a soundtrack!
In honor of the December 21, 2024, release date, I give you 12 days of songs that tell the story of Living Boundlessly.
Music runs all through the story because I passed on my great musical inheritance to the twins. (And probably the wordsmithing inheritance, too… Grace wrote a play in middle school, and Paul wrote a sci-fi novel in fifth grade.)
Boundless is available!
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The Sixteen Superpowers of Memoir Writers
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It’s easy to write a memoir! All you need to do is write something with universal resonance that is true and comes from your life.
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I really dig this idea of the playlist for the memoir. And, what touching moments in these excerpts - particularly you voicing to your twins that you've also been preparing them to leave.
Thank you for sharing.