Is wist a word? The OED says not, but I would argue for its inclusion. As an early teen, I was the walking definition of wistful, meaning, quite literally full of wist. Let’s consider possible synonyms … Was I instead melancholy? Nope, the feeling was less gut-gripping than that, yet stronger than longing. Reflective? No way. That suggests an intellectual hankering, which believe me, was years away. But I leaned hard into the wistful in those unsettled days. I was absolutely captive to if not wist, then wistful-ness? So clunky, that word. Plus the emphasis is wrong, less the wist, more the ness.

Shall we delve into a few of my favorite musical selections of the era? There was Carole King’s “Too Late Baby,” and Jimmy Buffet’s “Havana Daydreaming,” and for sure James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain.” Wist, wist, wist … And let’s not forget “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” a remake by the Platters that was an oldie even in my day. I adored it ne’ertheless. I distinctly remember, after a date that went poorly, meandering up my darkened hallway to my father’s study to spin it on the family turntable. Certain I would never date again, I slumped to the window and stared out at our front lawn, moonlight in the weeds. I may have actually shed a tear, so wrapped up was I in my manufactured teenaged angst.

Yet these numbers pale one and all beside the song that gave perfect voice to what was bottled up inside me, a little ballad by the soon-to-be forgotten group, Looking Glass—

Brandy, you’re a fine girl, what a good wife you would be, but my life, my lover, my lady, is the sea …

Is it regret I hear in these lines? Does regret equal wist? No, not really. At least regret is not precisely what “Brandy” evoked for me. It certainly wasn’t sorrow—what did I know of sorrow at age fourteen? But each time my radio played that quick guitar twang, then the riff on the keys followed by “doo doo ‘n doo doo,” my belly quivered and my heart swelled. I would crank up the volume and sing along with great gusto. And no verse bewitched me more than the last: At night, when the bars close down, Brandy walks through a silent town, and loves a man who’s not around …

Oh, the heartache! The delicious pain! This woman, this lovely barmaid, strong and independent yet imprisoned by love for a sailor she could never have. Even now I can feel it, the … the … the wist, for heaven’s sake! One refrain and I’m a skinny girl with long stringy hair who longed for curves ample enough to attract the one swaggering boy everyone yearned to make out with. Yep, there I stand in the dark corners of a fellow middle schooler’s smoky rec room while my friends, maybe a few enemies, roll around on the couch or slow-dance to “Stairway to Heaven.” I lean against the wall, less flower than sprout, and shut my eyes so that I might better conjure, and draw strength from, my precious Brandy—footsore, coins in the pocket of her apron—as she lays that whiskey down. Looped around her neck of course is a braided chain made of finest silver from the north of Spain. And it bears the name of the man Brandy loves! A man (her sailor!) who brought gifts from far away but made it clear he couldn’t stay.

How silly I was, a silly girl looking for love in all the wrong places. Unless maybe, just maybe, what I really hungered for wasn’t puppy love, or even romance. Maybe I couldn’t get enough of “Brandy” because of its poetry–a stretch, sure, but with apologies to any real poets out there, bear with me. Pop tune it may be, but the lyrics and the melody blend perfectly to create a certain mood (right?). A mood, I believe, that reflects and heightens the emotion its songwriters sought to convey. At the very least there’s this: Perhaps in those confounding years of my youth, I longed–without realizing it, mind you–for a sort of experience that was as yet out of my reach. As she pulled beers and served those sailors as they talked about their homes, Brandy took me with her, to that faraway fishing village by the sea where a spunky young woman could make it on her own (albeit without love). The lyrics, the harmonies that bolster them, rustled up in me not only the wobbly ache of the teenaged crush, but the exhilaration of finding oneself in an unfamiliar place or situation, the joy touched with loneliness that solitary travel, for example, can trigger, and that several years on, I would come to know myself, and to treasure.

So maybe my pre-pubescent self, my mind (my soul?), stood in awe of the power of the artist, the power to make words and rhythms work so effectively in tandem that they forge emotion out of air. Magical thinking? Could be, but to believe it, that at some level even then I hoped to imprint others with words the way Looking Glass imprinted me, gives me great solace.

“Brandy,” to conclude, has staying power. When a band cranked her up during a wedding reception I attended recently, I embarrassed myself by jumping and spinning (partner-less), circling my arms overhead and shouting every last syllable at full volume. The crowd of mostly twenty-somethings around me danced and sang along, too, if with slightly less passion.

All wist and wistfulness aside, “Brandy” continues to transport me, as all good art should. A couple of her introductory notes sound through my Pandora app, and I’m right back on that western bay, where I can feel the ocean fall and rise, and see its raging glory.

Note: This post grew out of a writing prompt my friend and fellow writer, Mai Al-Nakib, shared with our beloved writing group in June (thanks Mai!):

“Think of a song that meant something to you as a teen … Why did it mean so much? Does it still? Explore it in writing… “

If you have a second, drop in a comment below about a song you once loved that can still bring a little lump in the throat. I’d love to hear from you! And be sure to check out Mai’s latest book, An Unlasting Home, a gorgeous and expertly researched multi-generational novel: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/an-unlasting-home-mai-al-nakib/1139827261