Sleeping In The Flowers: Crushes, Horns, and Passing Notes
They Might Be Giants’ “Sleeping in the Flowers” stirs a flood of ninth-grade crushes, awkward moments, and one daydream that finally came true.
Yesterday, I rode a bus home from work while listening to Sleeping In The Flowers. In that moment, a rush of memories surfaced about every girl I’d had a crush on in the 9th grade. Surprisingly, there were kind of a lot of them. Before I drag you along memory lane, let’s talk about this incredible song.
Sleeping In The Flowers is the third track on They Might Be Giants’ album, John Henry but it’s the first track where this album’s horn section kicks in. Musically, this song is absolutely loaded.
Two electric guitars
Acoustic Guitar
Electric Bass
Drums
Baritone Sax
Tenor Sax
Trumpet
And Trombone
I mean, it’s a live, layered, and sonically packed piece of music.
One of my favorite things about this song is the electric guitar in the first verse (and all the rest of the verses.) The effect being used is reminiscent of the gating effect used all the way back on Ana Ng in the Lincoln album era. A sort of quick, pulsating tremolo. I hear that guitar tremolo’ing(?) and my skin is rocketed to frisson1 town.
Erin and the Radio Show
Common with many songs I heard while in school, this one comes with a litany of nostalgic emotions, mostly centered around crushes that I suffered. As I mentioned above, I was riding a bus on my way home, listening to Sleeping In The Flowers. Once one crush came to mind, I found myself remembering several other over the span of my 9th grade junior high school career. One such crush had carried over from the year before. Her name was Erin Silva.
Erin and I would spend an hour or so every Sunday evening on the phone while we listened to a radio show called Music With Moscowitz, a very Dr. Demento kind of program. We’d talk over commercials, laugh at some of the songs. We were great friends and I fell hard. I’ve shared in past posts about this crush but I certainly listened to this song while pining over the possibility of “going out” with Erin. I tried once the year prior but she revealed that she had just begun “going out” with Patrick Martin; a jock kid who shared in punching me on my birthday that same year.
The Sage Wisdom of Emily
There was also Emily Davis. Emily was one grade behind me and had a roll in the play that year along with me. I remembered all of a sudden how we met up on a few occasions outside of school. I think we saw a movie, I attended one of her soccer matches, and she invited me over to her community club house for her birthday. I was the only boy there.
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Also, Emily’s mom was our principal. Now that I look back at this, I would listen to this song, think about Emily and wonder how I could possibly get her to notice that I liked her. Chase - she liked you. Man, you’ve always been oblivious to this stuff.
Near the end of the year (this would have been after I received the news of my uncle’s death.) I asked Emily “out” via a paper note. As was the way. She wrote back the next day and had very articulately shared that she does like me a lot but in a few months, I’ll be headed to High School and she’ll be in Junior High for another year. She didn’t think it made sense to go down that road when it would be so short lived. Honestly - she was right and surprisingly wise for that age. One of the things that drew me in I think as I was also a wise kid. Just not wise enough to catch that.
Govella and the Paper of Rumors
Finally, Kristi Govella. I remember referring to her as only Govella. She was two grades behind me and in choir with me. Govella was also in the “gifted” class which was taught by my Language Arts teacher, Mrs. Parker. That teacher wanted me to take for the gifted class because she thought I seemed bored in her class - but not for lack of understanding. It was just - way too easy. I declined. Instead, she made sure that I would be the T.A. for her gifted class in the next semester so she could request that I also partake in the class discussions and projects.
One project was to create a new kind of meatball. I suggested we cram a tic-tac into the center of an already cooked meatball so that people would eat the meatball and immediately have their breath freshened. We named it “Meatball With a Tic-Tac Shoved In The Middle.” I think we got a B. Our choir took a field trip by bus somewhere. I was sitting in the back with Erin and her friend Lydia. I remember someone putting on the song Low Rider. It was a perfectly benign bus ride but the next school day to follow, Govella handed me a folded piece of paper.
Written inside were statements she heard the other lower grade students saying in her choir class about me. She had been secretly documenting activity for me on her own accord. A girl after my own heart.
“I heard he went down in Lydia in the back seat.”
“I bet his braces help make that even better.”
“His nose probably gets in the way of kissing.”
“Has he ever played a sport?”
Looking back, it was wildly inappropriate list of things for kids at that age to be commenting on. Also, everyone could see me sitting in a seat in the near back of the bus. There was no point in time where it was like, “Hey where did Chase go?” And finally, I would have had no business or idea how to be doing any of the things they were talking about. I was an indoor kid.” It was a very different feeling, thinking about being perceived by others in any way other than a funny nerd who listens to They Might Be Giants and write comedy monologues for school assemblies.
One afternoon, I stood at the edge of my backyard, looking across to the hills and cow pastures in the distance; cordless phone in hand. I called up Govella and asked her if she’d like to go to this last school dance thing with me. She had to go ask her parents. She came back and said she’s not allowed to but that she would have said yes. Not sure why I thought that was a good moment for this, but then I asked if she wanted to go out with me. Also a “yes, but” answer.
From Daydream to Wildflowers
Flansburgh says Sleeping In The Flowers is about getting stoned in Central Park but for me, it’s only ever been about unrequited crushes and daydreams of what could have been. Today, I hear the song and am reminded that I had a crush in my adult life that seemed like it was going to go the same way but something else happened. She felt the same way and now we’re married.
A couple years ago, we found ourselves in a park, the sun warming a patch of wildflowers where we sat. We didn’t fall asleep, but I thought about this song. And I thought, finally, the daydream came true.
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Frisson; French for "shiver"), also known as aesthetic chills or psychogenic shivers, is a psychophysiological response to rewarding stimuli (including music, films, stories, people, photos, and rituals[3]) that often induces a pleasurable or otherwise positively-valanced affective state and transient paresthesia (skin tingling or chills), sometimes along with piloerection (goose bumps) and mydriasis (pupil dilation).
funny thing, one of my previous science teachers (7th and 9th grade) is named Patrick Martin. i wonder if it's the same guy...i doubt it but itd be funny.