new place diptych by Max (click on image to enlarge)
So I was in the post office a few days ago mailing a package to North Salem, New York, and the clerk helping me was not Lara or Robin, our beloved regulars, but a substitute, a tall slender woman with gorgeous teeth and dark blonde hair piled high on her head.
She put my little package on the scale, typed in the address, frowned, and said, “You’ve either got the wrong town for that zip or the wrong zip for that town.” And I thought What a great lyric. Perhaps the chorus to a song about love going in the wrong direction or being only half right. But which half? Or maybe the song isn’t about love, but about figuring out what parts of ourselves to keep and what parts to let go of, a song about finding a new place to come from, creating a new vision of who and what we are in the world.
“Shall we assume you got the town right?” she asked, arching an impressive eyebrow as she typed in the town name. “That zip is…” And she gave me the zip code for North Salem.
“I got this address off his web site,” I said, appreciating her use of “shall we assume” rather than “do you want to assume”. Shall we assume meant we were in this together, guessing together, being right or wrong together. I felt grateful to her for sharing the responsibility with me for choosing the town over the zip.
My profuse thanks seemed to both please and annoy her—she was pleased to be thanked and annoyed I had taken so long at the window that a line was now snaking out the door where no line had been before I got there.
I need to backtrack a little here and mention that when I first stepped up to the counter and smiled at the substitute, not only was there was no line, but the first thing I said to her was, “I’ve never seen you here before. Are you real?”
She was somewhat taken aback by my question, but quickly recovered her aplomb and retorted, “Oh I’m real. Subbing today. I usually work at Little River.”
I said other silly things, the kind of absurdist ironic comedic things I say to Robin and Lara when they handle my postal needs, and as I was walking away from the substitute, I felt a pang of remorse for having been something of a smartass to this perfectly nice person who was just trying to do her job in a place where she didn’t usually work.
Happily my remorse was not long-lived and I returned to musing about her impromptu lyric: You’ve either got the wrong town for that zip or the wrong zip for that town.
I find the word that clunky. Sometimes we can’t avoid using that, but if we can, we should. This rule applies to prose, poetry, lyrics, letters to friends, letters to the editor, and grocery lists. Avoid using that whenever plausible. Ditto the word it. Its are a scourge upon the written page. In my opinion, its are far worse than thats because thats actually sometimes serve important grammatical purposes, whereas its are usually obfuscating and annoying and misleading. These are, of course, merely my opinions about its and thats. You may love its and thats and use them constantly. Fine. Be that way.
So…with the elimination of thats in mind, how about You’ve either got the wrong zip for the right town or the right zip for the wrong town.
Or we could drop the contraction of you have and get down with You either got the wrong zip for the right town, or the wrong town for the right zip.
Is this a Motown song? Country? Hip hop? Sondheim? Salsa? You choose.
No matter the genre, these lines beg for subsequent lines to rhyme with them and add layers of humor, irony, nuance, poignancy, piquancy, and a certain je ne sais quoi to the unfolding song. Aye there’s the rub. A certain je ne sais quoi. These things don’t grow on trees, you know. They can’t be bought from je ne sais quoi web sites. Je ne sais quoi must be unearthed from the inner recesses of the lyricist’s mind and brain and spirit, as diamonds must be mined and potatoes must be dug.
Another thing: just because a clever lyric falls into our mental purview doesn’t mean we have to write a song using said found lyric. (See Found Poetry) Just because you find a twenty-dollar bill doesn’t mean you have to immediately buy something, items of food or a scarf or new colored pencils, though why not? We might just appreciate the lyric as a passing run of words tickling our poetical songwriting synapses, fleeting amusement, momentary respite from the usual blither.
And this is where I got to regarding You’ve either got the wrong zip for the right town or the right zip for the wrong town. My poetical synapses had been tickled, but I wasn’t greatly inspired to use the line in a song. If you would like to use this lyric or a variation thereof, please do.
So…having written the preceding 875 words, I decided to celebrate by going to the Mendocino Farmers Market where I scored a dozen fabulous heirloom tomatoes and the first small-farm watermelon of the season, brought to the coast from the hotter inland climes, along with a coastal-grown cauliflower of such majesty and perfection I was torn between eating the blessed thing or placing the white majesty on a pedestal to admire until rot ensued. Eating won out over admiration and she was refrigerated.
I got home from the farmers market and here was an email from Max bearing his neato diptych with which I prefaced this article, the words accompanying the visuals reading: I am trying to locate a new place to come from. The place I came from isn’t working anymore.
I know. Right? How could I not try mixing those words with the substitute postal clerk’s impromptu lyrics? Here is what I’ve got so far. Imagine these words sung by Bill Withers with a groove reminiscent of his “Use Me”.
I got the wrong town for the right zip,
I said the right zip for the wrong town,
Place I came from ain’t working no more
Need a new place to come from now