Primer Essay #1: David, Milan, and I

Duran Duran is responsible for my discovery of Milan Kundera.

I don't have to tell you who Duran Duran is, or rather, was, as their significance in early to mid-80s popular culture was so huge. I received Seven and the Ragged Tiger for my twelfth birthday and became obsessed. My bedroom walls were covered in Duran Duran photos. I listened only to their music. I was going to marry John Taylor (who was, by far, the cutest and has aged the best. Which probably goes to show that while smoking and sun exposure will destroy your looks, a serious cocaine addiction will not.) By the time I turned 13, I was over them, my musical heart having moved on to U2, the Smiths, the Cure, and Aztec Camera (another band who I initially only read about) and my romantic heart having moved on to real life boys (not that I was any more successful with boys I knew. At least I can explain away my failure with John Taylor as a case of me never having met the man.)

Anyway, as I was saying, I was really into Duran Duran and bought every magazine that had an article or photo of them in it. In a number of the music magazines the band Japan was mentioned. Most of the articles talked about their breakup and how their lead singer, David Sylvian, was embarking on a solo career. I was curious. Now, it probably goes without saying that Japan was not played on the radio and any curiosity I actually had about them had to be indulged by buying their record. Now the prospect of buying a record by a band when I have never even heard a single song by them is terrifying to me even now, as an adult with disposable income of my own. It was truly impossible to imagine doing this as a preteen with an allowance and so many things I wanted (Guess jeans, le sportsac purses, makeup) to buy. But somehow I did buy the live album Oil on Canvas. And I liked it a lot (The music was decidedly New Wave, with some flirtations with New Age and Jazz.) I never actually got around to buying another Japan album (although Maria still remembers that I always looked at the Japan section in used record stores. It was never that I never intended to buy another Japan record, just that I never got around to it as there were always records I wanted more.) I bought copies of David Sylvian's solo records (at the time they were the Forbidden Colors single, and the albums Brilliant Trees and Gone To Earth. He had definitely gone over to New Age, Light Jazz, and ambient music with Gone To Earth.)

So, I went to high school filled with all my interest in music and my past experience as an obsessed fan of Duran Duran. I was (still am, actually) one of those people who believed that what you listened to revealed important information about who you were as a person. When I would meet someone, I thought nothing of grilling them with regards to their musical tastes and then deciding whether I wanted to be their friend based upon the answers. Of course, this really isn't true, a lot more went into determining whether I became friends with someone or not (not the least of which was whether or not they wanted to be friends with me) but the question "what music do you listen to?" was a pretty important one.

Sometime between my freshman and junior year I met a girl, Sherri, who was still a Duran Duran fan (which I had o admire as it was pretty uncool at that point, most people, including it seemed member of the band, having moved on past the glory days of "Hungry Like The Wolf") and she was also a David Sylvian fan as well. She was interesting, to me, as in all that time I spent asking people what music they listened to, she was the only person who also liked David Sylvian. How did she develop the interest? Sherri's favorite member of Duran Duran was Nick Rhodes. One thing about David Sylvian that I have thus far failed to mention is that he bore a very strong resemblance to Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran (past tense. They have both aged completely differently and look nothing like on another now.) So Sherri saw a picture of David in some magazine and developed a curiosity about him based on what and who he looked like. I mention this because it is an even more extreme version of my own journey and, to this day, Sherri is the only person who has ever admitted discovering music this way.

Sherri wasn't really a friend of mine in that we really only chatted at school and, maybe, once or twice on the telephone. I really have no idea how it came to pass that we saw the film The Unbearable Lightness of Being together. I know she must have been he one to suggest it as I had not heard of Milan Kundera (I don't have to tell you who he is, do I?), or even the "new Daniel Day Lewis (ditto?) film" when I bought my ticket at the Water Tower Place box office. But she must have asked me to see the film and I said yes and I am so glad I did because, well, I loved the film. I loved the film so much, I went looking for Milan Kundera's books at the bookstore. There was The Unbearable Lightness of Being on the bookshelf, next to The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, which I became the first Milan Kundera novel I read. Why did I choose that book, as opposed to the novel of which I had just seen the film version? Why, because David Sylvian had a song on Gone To Earth called Laughter and Forgetting. Yes, I asked Sherri and she confessed that this was why she started reading Milan Kundera.

So, as totally strange as it sounds a pop band from the early eighties was responsible for me discovering one of the greatest novelists of post modern literature. Is it possible I may have discovered Milan Kundera in another way? Yes possibly. But who can say for sure?

Oh my. As I type this, I realize that Milan Kundera is probably responsible for me reading Salman Rushdie. I audited a class on post modern novels my junior year of college. I did so because Milan Kundera was on the syllabus. So was Salman Rushdie. While I had remembered the fatwa and had even tried to read The Satanic Versus when I was 17 (I got about 20 pages into it, maybe) it was reading Midnight's Children for this class which hooked me (of course, it was another two years after that before I attempted to tackle The Satanic Versus again.)

So the flow chart would be Duran Duran to Japan/David Sylvian to Milan Kundera to Salman Rushdie. Which means that whoever gave me Seven and the Ragged Tiger in 1984 changed the course of my entire life.