telephones to say what we can't say

“we've got telephones to say what we can't say....”
(Graham Parsons, “Wheels”)


why does it seem so crucial to have telephones to say what you can’t say>? Country songs have a knack for getting at the feeling you could only
convey in the direct indirection of the lyric. I think this one runs something
like "How can I miss you when you won;t even leave"; but there's an added wrinkle
to it as well, a wrinkle that is also there in one of my new favorite movies, "Pillow Talk."

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1853882649/

OK it's 1959 and it's Rock Hudson and Doris Day, so you have to wade through a fair amount "witty" chitchat
about women's inalienable right to catch their man and a series of increasingly unfunny double entendres what all those
horny men have on their minds all the time (though it is amusing to see Doris starring as the smart blonde while a serious of dumb
brunettes--and one stunningly dumb redheaded stripper--are brought in as contrast).

The gist of the movie though is that Doris and Rock are unwillingly forced to share a party line-
she needs to use it at odd hours for her interior design business, while he uses it to woo a series of gullible girls--using the same love song, with their interchangeable two-syllable names plugged into the middle of the third line... She conceives a profound hatred for him though she knows him only by name and voice; when they
meet in real life he changes his name and puts on the fakest of all Texas accents to woo her.
Their virtual life together, it turns out, has given him great ammunition to bed her--
but also taught him to love her as he never loved those easy catches (“we've got telephones to say what we can't say...”)

I don’t think I’ve yet figured out every ricochet of this movie—after the the opening credit song, for example,
"pillow talk", why does Doris Day open the movie by humming it just as its chords die away, as if she too has been listening in to the soundtrack of the movie of her life? And when another eavesdropper on the partyline starts to talk to Rock Hudson (who writes love songs for a living, meaning he gives other people the soundtracks of their own distant lives) why is it that she hums back to him the interchangeable girl song, but with her own name (Edna) plugged in? And perhaps the subtlest ricochet of all--
there is nothing high-brow or subtle about it, no sense that it is plumbing the rich
substrata of a virtual life. No its brilliance is that it makes the everyday potentiality of
the telephone (specifically the party line, which has some fascinating affinities to blogs
and e-mail lists, with their lurkers...) visible that it helps you see how in a
technologically saturated environment we all
(without consciously embracing the ideology of the spectacle or the simulacrum) have to assemble a composite, coherent life out of disjointed bits of information--a voice and a name over
here, a hunk of a man from Texas over there.....Virtually irresistible.

And for future reference, an old gospel song Earl Monroe performs (words and music by Albert Brumley, perhaps 1920?)

Turn your radio on
And listen to the music in the air

Turn the lights down low
And listen to the Master's Radio,
Get in touch with God
Turn your radio on.