Daft Punk and Bears with Mom
A week before my elderly mother’s sudden death from a stroke, I happened to visit her at my sister Marjorie’s house. Late one Saturday night, the three of us burrowed together on Marj’s L-shaped sofa to watch “Balls Deep” on the Viceland channel, and after that a documentary on music duo Daft Punk. Mom mostly dozed over my left shoulder, waking once to exclaim “Oh my GOSH — that man’s belly!” at a scene from the “Bears” episode of “Balls Deep.” Marj and I laughed until we cried: the huge-bellied man mom spoke of was, after all, nearly nude. He was one of the “bears” of summer in Provincetown — big, bearded, and gay — tossing around the pale, skinny, spectacled male host of the show in a jam-packed swimming pool. It was an excellent show to begin with, but sooo much more entertaining to watch with our 85-year-old, Catholic, Japanese-American mother.
Marj and I watched Daft Punk Unchained after our mom toddled off to bed, but their music still brings her back to me — or maybe takes me to wherever she dwells now. I started listening obsessively to the Tron: Legacy soundtrack, impressed by their stylistic range, but also by their rejection of fame. When they must make public appearances, they do so anonymously, with custom-made robot helmets that flash LED lights across their eyes. I have no intention of seeing Tron: Legacy (my time is too limited on this planet to waste it on a poorly received movie, even if Jeff Bridges is in it). But I listen to the soundtrack with headphones while writing, or blast it on speakers at home, transported to some place beyond the petty habits of my own humanity. Full-throated orchestral tracks are layered with electronica. Some overwhelm my nerves, like “The Game Has Changed” and “Fall,” likely because that was when Tron was getting cyberized or trapped in the computer game or whatever the plot is. But the expansive “Flynn Lives” and “Outlands,” the sorrowful “Adagio for Tron,” the ultra-danceable “End of Line:” when I hear them I travel the cosmos where my mom disappeared, and return to those moments of huddled laughter on the couch with her and my sister.
