Long, Long TIme.

First Kate Bush, now Linda Ronstadt. I can’t say I’m unhappy about a new generation discovering the formative artists of my past, but — and maybe this is just how it works — it’s kind of the easy Kate Bush (I mean, c’mon, Running Up That Hill?), the easy Linda Ronstadt. I knew and loved all Ronstadt’s 70s hits, for some reason especially Blue Bayou, but I didn’t hear Long, Long Time until the first week of my first year of college when a girl named Lori invited me to her dorm room, turned off the lights, played the greatest hits album, and told me that Long, Long Time was the best song. I agreed. (Lori also sat very close to me on the bed and tried to kiss me.)

Long, Long Time was soon, and it still is, the anthem of my unreciprocated crush on an art student named Jason who was also a dancer and actor, and he was in my first play in college. It was, or should have been, an embarrassing crush. Jason was gentle but taciturn to the point of seeming a bit cold, beautiful like a Raphael portrait, and artistic. He was the boy literally everyone had a crush on, but I thought my feelings were special and I nursed them for over two years.

He moved to New York around the same time I did, and I pined and pined and finally got up the nerve to call him. He invited me to his apartment, I think it was in Queens or maybe just upper Manhattan, to see the canvases he was working on, but that was as far as I can remember the only time I saw him in the city.

I think of Long, Long Time like I think of my obsession with Jason: too easy, obvious, ultimately kind of silly. Is it really “love” when the object of your feelings has no interest? But the song’s emotional force, then and still this morning, like the state it describes, is undeniable, and sweet and painful, so who am I to judge?

Don’t worry, I didn’t send it. I found it tucked into my diary.