Last year, I finally downloaded Phil Spector’s “A Christmas Gift For You,” the landmark 1963 Christmas album that cemented the Wall of Sound in music history. And I hit upon a track I’d never heard, by a random assembly of session singers that happened to include Darlene Love.
“The Bells of St Mary” was a pop song from 1917. It got used in a movie of the same name starring Bing Crosby in the 40s, which included a Christmas pageant scene, and so apparently became a Christmas song the same way Jingle Bells did. And then it mostly dropped out of consciousness.
I heard it. And it sounded…triumphant. And I played it throughout December, and then realized…this is what it would sound like if we win in November, if we rejected Trump, if we broke through and ended the nightmare. And I hit pause immediately and didn’t play it again for fear of a jinx.
I didn’t realize 2020 would be a lifetime itself. But the same friend who came over in anticipation of a party in 2016 was the first to Tweet out “YEAH BUDDY” and that’s how I learned that we did it. And I immediately found the song on my phone, popped in the AirPods, and cranked it. Because I want to remember this feeling. I want the Pavlovian conditioning. I want this to be evoked every time those bells hit. I want to be reminded that sometimes, believing in hope ends in the good kind of tears.