Listening to the random play of my iPod and "Chiquitita" by ABBA comes on and I realize that my psyche is saddled with this song until the day I day. No one in the world carries more baggage with this tune than I do. Not even Bjork and what's his name and Freda and what's her name. Especially not them. They probably forgot all about the song the second they stopped recording it.
But for me, it will always lodge in my brain as the soundtrack to several emotionally-scarring moments. First and foremost my parents' divorce. My father went through an ABBA craze after the divorce...most likely due to his purchase of a big-time 8-track player stereo system. I remember hearing that damn ABBA album playing all the time at his house when we would visit on the weekends. And that song always hit a nerve with me. Even to this day, I can't figure it out. What a weird, fucked-up song. What the hell is it about? It's got this creepy off-beat pace that speeds up and slows down with that ghostly vocal. And of all things, I think a calliope? It feels like you are on some sort of demented merry-go-round. The song always creeped me out.
But then it got worse.
My father was infamous for hanging out with us nine- and seven-year olds as if we were regular adult buddies. Whether it was giving us a pack of matches and a box of fireworks to go play with, letting us drive the car around the back roads of Jackson, or whatever, it was clear he didn't stress too much about potential accidents or such things.
Case 1...movies. We were there on the weekends. There was a drive-in theater nearby. We were going to the movies. My dad was not going to let our age interfere with the types of movies he would see were he on his own. So we hopped in and were treated to Porky's, Mad Max, and a variety of the like.
But in the summer of 1979 he packed us into the car to see the one movie that would shape my life forever: Ridley Scott's Alien. Still a great movie to this day. But I will tell you that you have never really experienced this movie until you've seen it as a 10-year old on a full stomach of popcorn and soda. The last memory I have before entering the theater was...you guessed it...the sounds of "Chiquitita" flowing through the speakers of my dad's Lincoln Continental.
Two hours, and one horrifying movie that featured an alien bursting through someone's stomach later, we returned to the car. To say my brother and I were in shock would be an understatement. I remember being terrified to even get inside the car...the interior of which I now realized with horror looked a lot like the inside of the spaceship Nostromo.
My dad turns the key, cranks the ignition...cue "Chiquitita."
That evening I lasted only about 10 minutes in bed before barfing all over the wall of our bedroom. Mercifully, I remember few other things about the aftermath, although I do recall violently fighting against going to see the Disney space movie The Black Hole several weeks later.
But "Chiquitita?" Baby, that is still brings it all back. When I hear that song, it's once again 1979 and that is the soundtrack to Alien and my parents' divorce. And honestly, listening the song? I can't imagine any other meaning to it.
