Last night, we played the Zoo in Portland. During sound check, a woman said, "Lansdowne High School" as I walked by. I stopped and looked at her: that was my high school, and it's a pretty obscure public school. Who would know this? She said her name and I instantly recognized her as the woman whose story about taking acid by the Yoo-hoo chocolate drink factory (which she told me in high school) was the inspiration for the Talking Heads song "And She Was." I hadn’t seen her in 30+ years and her voice and open demeanor hadn't changed a bit. We and a few others were kind of out of place in that high school. She said tonight, "You don't realize how oppressive a place is until you get out of it." And yet I don't remember her being downcast there. If anything she was a wacky ray of light in a pretty twisted, repressive environment.
Did she know about this song and that I occasionally claimed her story, at least as I remembered it, was the inspiration? She did, and said that she didn’t remember it exactly like that.
The show went incredibly well. I thought it was going to be a white wine and brie crowd, but by the time everyone had arrived they stretched to the elephant house and it looked like a mini-festival — a sea of people — and they went nuts. The moon came up and a peacock flew up into a tree, bats flew overhead, and there were rumors that the elephants danced.
After the show, my high school friend said "You can continue telling the story."
I guess it must feel to her like having a part of your life fictionalized, imagined, distorted — like it was a stranger's life.
