12 Years Gone: The Return of Jody Watley

In 1993, during marital crisis No. 177, I raced along the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut, feeling exceptionally down about the wreckage of my life. Then radio played a song with lyrics that captured a mood a despair and loss of love. It hit me very hard.

I did not hear the song again for 12 years, until three days after I posted an entry on my new fave radio station, the Mix 102.7 FM in New York. I wrote about that kind of dance music, and immediately the universe hurls the music back at me: same parkway, different station, same electrified response. Could this be a "compulsion of music," similar to my madcap experience discussed a week ago about "The Da Vinci Code"?

This time, however, I listened carefully and learned that the artist was Jody Watley. I searched online and found, indeed, she recorded the song in 1987 with the title, "Don't You Want Me." The lyrics that packed such a jolt are:

Are you looking for a new love?
Or does commitment seem to bring you down?

Twelve years later, the song sounded as powerful as ever. However, changing life circumstances altered my emotional response. It is no longer a lament for love slipping away, day by day. Rather, I view it as an aural artifact from a past time of life -- and as a checklist of enquiries that can be useful now that I've moved far beyond the wreckage of 1993.