As a songwriting god, I occasionally encounter a situation where I am invited to write a song on a particular topic. At this point, like may other songwriting gods, I could probably put together an album of them. For instance, there’s “Shlomo the Dreidel Shark”, which I wrote because my friend Jon Waterman invited me to contribute to an album of original holiday music he was putting together. The song didn’t make it onto the album, because Jon was concerned that it cast the Jewish religion in an unflattering light – but hey, I’m Jewish, I get to do that. Or, perhaps, there was the songwriters’ night for which the topic, chosen by the previous month’s audience, was “surrogate mothers for orphaned animals”. I countered with “It’s Not Over Till the Cat Lady Sings”, which, you’ll have to agree, is the only suitable response to that sort of epic lack of judgment on the part of the previous month’s audience. And so forth.
My wife, She Who Must Be Taunted, has a dear friend – let’s call her the Dislocated Hun – who’s been unattached for a fairly long time, which has led to periodic attacks of extreme dismay. DH lives in a location where her prospects are somewhat circumscribed, and we were all very excited when, this past spring, she met somebody who actually seemed interested, interesting, and the appropriate age. Yay! Or not so yay, when, over the summer, due either to deep unresolved personal issues, a profound failure of judgment and good taste, or some toxic combination of the two, this person proceeded to ignore DH completely, after a very promising beginning. DH was deeply stricken by this betrayal, and, well, at this point the image in your mind should be one of the Valkyries from the Ring Cycle. And this is the point at which DH asks me to write her a song.
A nasty song, she says. She proposes a title: “The Feckless Android”. “I was going for something a bit more subtle. The Friendly Ghost, maybe,” I counter. “Done”, she says. And now I’m on the hook.
Now, I’m not a nasty person. Bitter, yes. Angry? Definitely. Self-righteous, regularly appalled, short-tempered, I’ll cop to all of ’em. But nasty, I can’t do. So I was bound to let her down, at least partially. But who of us can’t identify with this level of betrayal and disappointment? And so “My Friendly Ghost” was born. Here’s a little bit:
There was a haunting in the hall
I thought I heard you but it wasn’t you at all
Just the whistle of the breeze
Or the rustling of the leaves amid the trees
The rattling of your chains
Is barely louder than the silence that remains
These are the things I miss the most
About my friendly ghost
It’s quiet and bitter and forlorn and I really, really like it. DH liked it, too. I hope she got a good cry out of it – that was sort of the point.
If you are my friend, and you are wronged, I will brandish my sword. It draws bile rather than blood, but frequently, that will do.