Mendocino

I awoke to the McGarrigle Sisters singing “Talk to Me of Mendocino,” a heartbreakingly beautiful expression of longing. I think it was this evening’s sleep soundtrack. It would seem in the song that she means to head west back to Mendocino from the state of old New York where she has been residing contentedly since first she started roaming. Suddenly, however, she has become homesick and wants to head back west. 

     But I began to wonder: Why does she ask her companion to talk of Mendocino. Does she need to be convinced to undertake the journey by verbal images of the place? She apparently possesses clear images of Mendocino. Or do the images require speech to have some actuality? Is it talk that is necessary to inspire her journeying? Or will the talk substitute for the travel? And I wonder why does she ask “Must I wait, must I follow”? The song suggested that she has been the initiator of the travel and so I wonder why she seems troubled by a compulsion to follow? Or is it the other who wants to wait but she is anxious to set out for Mendocino and the talk will inspire the other to join in the return? The paradoxical nature of her questions, whether she must wait or follow suggests a kind of emotional paralysis. Does she want to go back to Mendocino or just to be talked to about it? If I punctuate the line “Won’t you say come with me?” with a comma after ‘say,’ then she asks a question; but if there is no comma then she makes a statement and requests that her companion invite her to join the journey back to Mendocino. In either case, however, she requires invitation.

     Perhaps longing exists in the tension between gojng and staying. And this travel need not be merely a physical journeying but can be embedded in feeling. She desires to go but must be convinced; she wishes to stay but feels compelled to go. The images of home (and not the home away from home!) draw her to Mendocino, but there is an underlying lethargy despite her Desire. I wonder: if she had come of age in New York, then does she head back to Mendocino to enter an adulthood or does she imagine a return to childhood. Her return Mendocino will be permanent: even as she anticipates the sun rising over the redwoods she asserts that she will not rise to leave Mendocino again. 

     And so it would seem that it is she who talks of Mendocino. Talk substitutes for action. I do wonder what she really wants to hear.