Music Memory

Generally, smell is the sense most connected with memory.

But music, a part of the sense of hearing, triggers many memories.

The other day while riding to Ridgefield, I was listening to the True Oldies Channel on the radio when I heard the Herb Alpert song, "Rise." Immediately I was back to the summer of 1980 of General Hospital when Luke raped Laura.

The weird thing was that I wasn't even watching General Hospital at the time. But my roommate Pam was watching and we started watching each other's soaps.

Another weird thing was that my favorite character on GH was Luke, the rapist. Maybe because I didn't actually see the rape scene. Probably, it was because Anthony Geary as Luke was compelling.

We didn't realize at the time that we were witnessing the dawn of a cultural phenomenon that culminated in Luke and Laura's wedding in November 1981. Although many discussions of Luke and Laura focus on that event, it would have just been another soap wedding had it not been for the 1980 summer storyline. Love on the run: trying to decipher the little black book, uncovering the mystery of the left-handed boy, evading Hutch the hit man (who later grew a heart of gold), dancing in the fantasy department store sequence, posing as newlyweds Lloyd and Lucy, erecting their own version of the walls of Jericho each night.

Yes, the falling in love with your rapist storyline was grossly offensive. Yes, some of Luke and Laura's adventures were outlandish. But they were intensely watchable; Geary and Francis had chemistry.

That summer Pam and I were studying for the New York bar exam, staying on in our dorm room at NYU. I took the morning bar review course; Pam took the evening course. In between classes, we found it relaxing to spend our afternoons watching the ABC soaps: All My Children, One Life to Live,  General Hospital and The Edge of Night. The  stress of studying for the bar paled next to being on the run from the mob, amnesia and the like. We must have done something right because we both passed and I can remember that summer fondly.