I WILL REMEMBER YOUR NAME!

Irene Cara is dead. According to the New York Times, “Cara died at her home in Largo, Florida, on November 25, 2022, at the age of 63.  As of late November 2022, the cause of her death is unknown.”

I have been overwhelmed by the flood of memories this morning from my youth in which her voice is strong in the background track.

I can smell the rotten-egg stench of the lotion of the perm I got because I wanted to dance like Coco from Fame! did while Irene Cara sang…

I can catch the moon in my hand

Don’t you know who I am?

Remember my name

I’m gonna live forever

I’m gonna learn how to fly

High

I feel it coming together

People will see me and cry

I’m gonna make it to heaven

Light up the sky like a flame

Fame!

[Source of pic: Wikipedia]

[Source of pic: Wikipedia]

And I smell the cigarette smoke on the misshapen grey sweatshirt I bought because Jennifer Beals danced in one just like it in Flashdance, while I cried in my bedroom over being stood up by a date, and Irene Cara sang the things I was feeling:

First, when there’s nothing

But a slow glowing dream

That your fear seems to hide

Deep inside your mind

All alone, I have cried

Silent tears full of pride

In a world made of steel

Made of stone…

It reminds me of the night Jim Steinman died on April 19, 2021, when I wrote on Facebook:

The poets say that smell is the last memory to go. I lost mine nose last winter and didn’t know until it came back. Last September I went to pee in the early hours of the morning and stepped right in a pile of still-warm Goose shit without smelling it before it squished through my toes. It’s been sporadic since, vague and confused when it’s made any appearance at all. Then, about a month ago, I was pounded about the nose by the fish and chips shop at the mall, and, a week later, I was in the car and suddenly smelled the perfume of a fellow passenger, as though a switch had been flipped to open up communication between my nose and brain. Since then I have been hyper aware of smell, stench, aroma, fragrance. I smell stuff better than a ferret at the moment. My own breath, for example, is notagoodsmell, whilst I had forgotten the fond fustiness of the fur behind David’s ears. I had a shower late last night and used the conditioner I bought for its volume-value only; not the cheapest on the shelf, but it was not in a round bottle-who thought round bottles with no grabby corners were a good idea in wet, slippery conditions? Also it’s Revlon, so one hopes it hasn’t been distilled from the eyeballs of kittens. I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of memories when the steamy emulsion hit my old olfactories! It’s the same Flex Balsam I used in high school with new branding!

It took me back to being in my matric classroom with sunburn on the back of my legs on Monday after a Sunday picnic with a new romance, or dressing with Tania before a school social in my bedroom all dusty with shared eyeshadow palettes and secret cigarette ash. Flex Conditioner. It smells like being at the drive-in with a boy in army browns wearing too much Brut in his nervous armpits. “And you took the words right out of my mouth, it must have been while you were kissing me…” Jim Steinman’s songs in the background from a car radio full of static.

If I were a perfumier, I would probably say you need only add a dash of car seat pleather and spearmint chewing gum to Flex Conditioner and Brut deodorant to get the exact perfume of the inside of a Ford Cortina on a Friday night in 1980s Bloemfontein. You could call the fragrance Naval Hill Nuance.

Flex and Brut. All old blokes who did their military service in 1SAI would buy it for their wives and it would work better than Viagra for perking up their bedroom business.

I got out of the shower and scrolled through the news to find that Jim Steinman has died, and I don’t believe there’s a more appropriate soundtrack for a Flex and Brut memory-montage of my late teens than his music. I’m going to download all his songs I ought to be ashamed of liking so much, Barry Manilow, Bonnie Tyler, Air Supply, Meatloaf et al., and I am going to dance for a while now.

RIP Jim Steinman, long live my sense of smell!

And today, I say RIP Irene Cara; I will remember your name 🎵 I think I will have a shower now, maybe dance a little, and not worry too much that nobody lives forever.

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