Twice

Today my hair is in a low side ponytail and I'm wearing a big corduroy blazer. I blame Once. Endearing film heroines often make me want to dress like them: Samantha Morton in Morvern Callar, Chantal Goya in Masculin Féminin, Audrey Tautou in Amélie, and now this endearing Czech girl browsing men's blazers in a second-hand shop. Not that there were any low side ponytails in that film. The blazer, though. Yes.

And a man I recognized: he was on my list.

Roddy Doyle's The Barrytown Trilogy were the only books I read truly obsessively in high school outside of those assigned for classes, The Commitments being a particular rereading favorite. It goes without saying that I loved the film too. (I owned two films on VHS at the time: Tourfilm and The Commitments.) Everything I knew about soul I learned from Roddy Doyle and Alan Parker.

Soul-inspired and humming Wilson Pickett, I added Glen Hansard, the red-headed bass player from the film, to my list of "Whatever happened to"s, right between "New Fast Automatic Daffodils" and "yogurt delivery." His name surfaced once in Spin Magazine, in a review of the first album released by his band, The Frames. I picked up their CD in the local record shop, but put it down again, unsure. And never thought of him again.

And then, as the opening titles for Once started to roll in a Columbus movie theater this past weekend, his name suddenly surfaced again. I leaned over to my mother and whispered "I think he's the guy I had a crush on in The Commitments."

We watched as he created sweet, swelling music with an adorable girl in a men's blazer, songs I still can't get out of my head. The film made us light on our toes, and seeing my old red-headed crush was just like seeing an old friend again, one with adventures behind him now, older, more wise. I'd had adventures of my own, too. Satisfied with that, I crossed him off my list, and added the name of the girl in the men's blazer to my list. Markéta Irglová. Endeared to the point of fashion mimicry.

Which still doesn't explain the side ponytail. But, you know.

(Elsewhere in the Happy Links of Lovelytown, Dutch builds a Mies van der Rohe dollhouse for his daughter, and Antonia se prépare to manger beaucoup de cheese et pain en France.)

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.