Car Dancing

Music of a special summer

The summer of 1987 was one of the most incredible summers of my life. It was not just the Harmonic Convergence that happened that August. It was everything. Every little thing about that summer was magical.

The year began with my wife and I living in the magical city of Santa Fe, New Mexico. We were still newlyweds, two young whippersnappers looking to push the envelope of life.

The previous year we were joined by our other partner; a little baby girl. We were no longer just starstruck lovers on the road of thrills and profound experiences. We were now a threesome pushing the envelope even harder together.

As soon as our angel plopped out of my wife on the full moon I developed a desire stronger than any desire I had ever had. I wanted to be a mother!

Being male, however, my breasts could not offer any sustenance. I had to wait until our baby girl was weaned from her mother’s breasts. My delightful spouse was only too happy to turn over mothering responsibilities to me so that she could return the to the real world. And I was only too happy to burn all my ties and give the finger to the corporate world.

So as the time approached we went into action. My beloved spouse did not have the earning potential that I had. If we were going to make this role reversal work we had to drastically lower our monthly expenses to live off what she might be able to make. We realized that we had to move. Living smack-dab in the middle of downtown Santa Fe was not cheap (even then).

It was around that time that a very loving couple gave us a car. That’s right, they just gave us one of their spare cars. (Oddly, it was not the last time that happened.) They gave us their car on only one condition.

The car was a very orange Volkswagen Rabbit. It’s a car that I would have never picked for myself. It’s a car I would have been hesitant to hitch a ride from if I were hitchhiking. If anyone who is familiar with that type of car from that era knows, those cars were built almost entirely from plastic. If something breaks down about all you can do is throw it away and buy a different car.

The couple sat us down as they handed us the keys to the car, “The only thing we ask is that you respect the name of the car. The name of the car is, Gopi. Please don’t try to rename the car. It knows its name.”

I may be essentially testosterone-deficient but I’m a man, godamnit! I never name cars. That is something only females do. (Or so I’m told.)

We honored their request and took the keys…

…and our life profoundly changed!

Having read the awesome, mind-blowing novel by Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, I knew the meaning of the word, Gopi. It was a Sanskrit word that meant, A female cowherd, tending flocks of sheep, goats or cows who is a lover of Krishna with whom he dances at the time of the autumn moon.

How freaking perfect could that be? Seriously!

With the help of Gopi we began searching for a nearby rural community where the cost of living was much lower where we could settle in and become a transformed marital couple performing atypical cultural roles to the service of a little angel.

We discovered a ghost town south of Santa Fe named Madrid (pronounced MAD-rid). It was a tiny coal mining town that went extinct after the coal mine closed down in the 1930s. It was in the late 1970s that the ghost town was discovered and revitalized by old hippies, vagabonds, and new age woo woo types. When we moved there the population was around 130.

We found and rented an old miner’s cabin for $120 a month (electricity included). Surely to God we could afford that! It was a very small cabin with three rooms; a kitchen, a living room and a bedroom. There was no bathroom but there was an outhouse about 40 feet away from the house. The only running water came from a well and led into the kitchen. Under the kitchen sink was a pipe that led out onto the hillside where the kitchen water flushed out. There was no heat and no air conditioning. And there were plenty of spiders (more in the outhouse than in the house).

Was this the perfect place for a young couple to raise a small child — especially when the father was pretending to be a mother? I’ll leave that for you to decide.

Before we left Santa Fe (and civilization) we went on a little shopping spree to pick up essentials we would need in the wilderness. We were in some store and I heard some song on the speaker system that tickled my funny bone. I asked the clerk what that was. He said that it was a song from the new Paul Simon album, Graceland.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

“The song or the album?”

“The album, of course.” (I hadn’t heard any other songs form the album.)

From that moment onward Paul Simon’s Graceland album become the album of the summer of 1987 for me and my little family. Little did I know that that album would become the defining music of that summer of 1987.

The thing I love about Gopi is that she had a built-in cassette player. While we spent a very long summer in a ghost town out in the middle of the wilderness we also spent in inordinate amount of time in Gopi. During that summer of 1987 we must have put several thousand miles on that magical Volkswagen Rabbit that never broke down.

We drove to Texas, we drove all over New Mexico, we drove to Colorado. Every weekend we drove somewhere. We spent almost as much time in Gopi as we did in that wilderness cabin.

And almost every minute we were driving in Gopi we were listening to Graceland. And if that wasn’t enough we listened to it while we were in the cabin. The album was constantly reverberating in our noggins for the entire summer.

We listened to it in the car as we drove to the city to go shopping. We listened to it on our way to our weekly sweat-lodges. We listened to it as we went on our weekly drives of adventure to places in the enchanted stated of New Mexico. We were never in Gopi without Paul Simon singing. Going for a drive, for no matter what reason, we were listening to Paul Simon.

It was our album. It was our vibration. It was our mutual experience. It is what colored and textured our world. The rhythm flowed equally through us. It touched all three of our souls simultaneously and equally. In this music we became one.

As the album played there was always one song that threw everything up a few octaves. It was, “You Can Call Me Al.”

Whenever that song began playing everything changed. The entire vibrations within Gopi suddenly changed. My wife and I would inexplicably start dancing in our car seats. We would look back into the back seat and our delightful daughter in her child car seat would also be dancing. Her arms would be flailing as were her little chubby legs. She would be singing incoherently to the words. She was deliriously happy.

And so were we; her parents.

What is car dancing? It is when you dance as much as you can while restrained within a car as it travels down the highway. (And it is amazing how much dancing can be done, even in a tiny car like Gopi.)

It was, without a doubt, the song of the summer.

No weekend stood out more in that summer than the Harmonic Convergence. We drove in Gopi all the way from Madrid to the holy site of Chaco Canyon to experience the profound event with thousands of others. It was professed to be a major shift in human consciousness. It was to be a major event that would help usher in the new golden age.

You bet we were going to be there!

We listened to Paul Simon the whole way there and the whole way back. And every time You Can Call Me Al came on we would together begin car dancing. We simply could not help it.

When we car danced we held nothing back. We flung ourselves as much as we could within the restraints of the car. We moved our bodies as though we were on some dance floor. And so did our little angel in the car seat in the back. When we were at home at the cabin we would put on that song and she would immediately — no matter what she was doing — begin to dance. Putting on that song was like clicking on a remote that turned her into dance mode. She always immediately began dancing. My lover and I did the same. We simply could not help it just like our angelic daughter. During that magic summer whenever that song began playing we would begin dancing. It was automatic.

At the Harmonic Convergence at the holy site of Chaco Canyon we went through several group celebrations. It was awesome. But the true highlight of the event was the sunrise of the final day. There were no camping facilities at the site — and we had no camping equipment. We ended up sleeping through the night in our little friend Gopi.

My wife and I changed seats. She sat and slept in the driver’s seat while I sat and slept in the passenger seat with our daughter in my arms. We could not expect her to sleep in her car seat. With several blankets under her, I cradled her and became the bed she would sleep on through the night. We could not have been closer.

At some point I developed a leg cramp. Normally, I would jump out of bed and walk it off. But I wasn’t in a bed. I was in a car. And my little angel was in my arms. I couldn’t jump up and out of the car without waking the angel.

So I sat there and waited through the leg cramp. When it FINALLY subsided I realized that my leg was waking me up for the consciousness-raising sunrise ceremony of the Harmonic Convergence. I had placed Gopi so that she was facing eastward towards the sunrise.

With the leg cramp subsiding, I sat there with my angel in my arms up to my heart, I watched the sunrise happen on that holy day. It was the most incredible sunrise I’ve ever experienced in my life. Everything was profoundly different from that experience onwards.

On the long drive home to Madrid we listened to Paul Simon’s Graceland album over and over and over. And every time You Can Call Me Al came on the three of us would start car dancing. We became enveloped in happiness and bliss and joy. I can still feel that car dancing now.

Nowadays, whenever I hear any of the Graceland album, especially You Can Call Me Al, I think back to that magical summer of 1987, I think back to all the car dancing, I think back to Gopi, and I think back to a moment when my life changed while my little angel slept up against my heart.

Now, when I hear or think about that favorite summer song from so long ago I cannot help but think about my lover, our adventures together and our daughter I hold to my heart still after all these years. That song opens the floodgates of my heart.

It’s been well over thirty years but I can’t help but wonder if I go over to my daughter’s house and I had a device to start playing that song if she would start dancing even after all these years. After more than thirty years the conditioning may have faded away for her but I’m pretty sure that I would start dancing. And I hardly ever start dancing. For her, though, I would definitely start dancing — especially if Paul Simon was singing, You Can Call Me Al.

Author’s note: This piece was prompted by Lindsay Lonai Linegar through her publication, Creative Humans. She was looking for stories about “Songs of My Summer.” It made me think. There are so many songs to choose from and it was through all that noggin thinking that I realized that there was one special summer song. For that I thank Lindsay.