Over the Valley

The single from Pink Martini's new album, "Splendor in the Grass," is as much a love song to the city of Portland as it is to China Forbes' husband.  Okay, perhaps that isn't how Forbes sees it, but as a Portland native, I couldn't help noticing a few Northwest themes that pepper the song's otherwise generic country landscape: the house among the trees, the refrain "We would never roam/ever far from home," and of course the opening image, a pink-lined cloud.  If there were an archetypal vision of Portland, it would be this country house dwarfed by evergreen forest under a cloudy sky with a pink lining at sunset.

Love has location.  We come to Oregon and never want to leave.  This is true for my sister and I: neither of us are choosing careers that have a market in Portland, yet we daily consider scrapping all our plans simply for a chance to live in the Northwest again.  The song would be empty without its central image, which is of course the Willamette Valley.  This isn't an "anywhere we go, so long as I'm with you" sort of relationship.  We have a home - the forest, the valley, the sunset, and yes, even the rain.

Why does this version of love seem so much more powerful than the Beatles' "A Little Help from My Friends" style? Is it just a cultural thing?  Portland is a community culture.  I never realized this until I moved away and discovered that there are places in the world where your neighbors aren't your best friends, where community events aren't the coolest thing to do on a Friday afternoon, and city life doesn't feel like the natural evolution of Sesame Street ("Sing").  There are cities in the world where it isn't kosher to write a little ditty poking fun at the mayor for his sex scandal that broke last year ("Bitty Boppy Betty").  In fact, there are places where what you think of the city depends primarily on your socioeconomic class and race.  You might even hate the nameless suburb that you called home for the past eight years and never speak to the person living next to you.  At worst, spend an afternoon in a Starbucks coffee shop.  The innocent native Portlander asks, where is the love in all that generic mass-culture, individualism and isolation?

But China Forbes is no Portland native.  Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she moved here as a young adult.  As an outsider, encountering Portland culture must have been a slightly moving experience, and yet it's twelve years later, and Pink Martini is already a city establishment.  They play the New Years Eve show down at the Schnitz.  Sam Adams is there, as are choirs from the local high schools and a Brazilian marching band.  So is the cross-dressing repairman who fixed my mother's heater two weeks ago.  And there's love here.  Location, permanence, and fidelity; all in one big neighborhood.  We've come a long way since the sexual revolution, even if we still sing about illicit relationships occasionally ("And Then You're Gone," "But Now I'm Back").  Who knows how we got here, but when we sober up, we're happy with the results all the same.

I'm fascinated with what this kind of song says about cultural trends.  It seems permanent relationships are popular again among young American adults.  Having shed ourselves of religious morality, we find we still prefer lasting companionship and fidelity.  Perhaps we're realizing it isn't all about the sex - even if that part is great too.  It takes a degree of maturity to look at yourself and realize, "Hey, I'm aging, and I'd like to grow old with someone.  Maybe even have a family that isn't torn apart by divorce or a father married to his career."

Songs like "Over the Valley" tell us companionship is out there, ripe for the taking.  We've moved beyond instant gratification, which is refreshing to see.  The song's slow shuffle-beat, springy Lauderdale piano, and lyrical violin bridge leave us sitting on the back porch in late autumn, watching the sun settling over the pine forest as birds sing about the rainstorm that has just lifted.  Perhaps if we look behind us, we'll even glimpse the peak of the mountain through the clouds.  As the song ends, a cool October breeze sets in sleep comes on fast and easy.