The Unauthorized Autobiography of Me. Section Six.

 

Earworms.

I was infected at a young age.

Poet and Peasant overture.

Second Hungarian Rhapsody.

The Last Spring.

Radetzky March.

Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana.

Never Mind the Why and Wherefore.

Hungarian Dance Number Five.

The television spouted this music

as Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker

cavorted; the tunes tunneling into

my brain.

John Williams frostily narrating ads for

the Longines Symphonette records,

inviting me, a dumb five year old,

to let the melodies wash nakedly 

over me.

It's a wonder my parents

didn't notice my musical

orgasms. 

Or maybe they did --

and kept silent,

mourning my corrupt

and elfin ways.

There is a goofy musical bridge

in Saps at Sea

when Stan runs over Ollie

with their model T.

It is an elegy played on

discordant flutes

for every grimace

that every clown

has ever made

in frustration

at the callousness

of fate.

Every note of that

inconsequential ditty

corrosively etched on

my default memory --

automatically playing in

a loop whenever I'm bored

with a book, a person, a movie.

As a first of may at Ringling

I put in a dozen appearances

during the three hour show.

Clown alley far from the entrance,

I had to remember dozens of musical cues

 to prepare

props and get into place for the big

production numbers.

My blood boiled with joy

in the ring gags

as the strident music

took me off this planet

full of woe and gravity

to a place where ethereal

beings swatted each other

with cricket bats.

Those raucous gallops, polkas, and screamers

still haunt the fringes of my mind,

invading my sleep with slide trombones

and siren whistles. I wake up,

ready to do a buster.

To take a header into a shaving cream pie.

Ah, these old bones won't stand

any more pratfalls.  

But come the Resurrection,

come that hilarious rebirth,

I'll be doing 108's with Ben Turpin

in front of the Throne of God.

While angelic instruments play

the Mosquito Parade March.