Eyes are the windows to your soul, right?
Maybe that’s why so many rock songs have eyes in the title. “Lyin’ Eyes.” “Bette Davis Eyes.” “These Eyes.”
My favorite is Jackson Browne’s “Doctor My Eyes,” which he started writing after grappling with eye problems of his own. The trouble with his eyes became something larger: a song about what happens when you’ve seen too much of the world and aren’t sure how to feel about it. This being Jackson Browne, he didn’t stop with eye drops.
Lately, I’ve been hearing that song in a whole new way. One weekend, not too long ago, I developed pain and blurriness in my right eye.
Have you ever noticed how medical trouble always seems to strike after hours? The doctor on call told me to come in Monday morning. My new ophthalmologist gave me a thorough exam: dilation, bright lights, instructions to look up, down, left, and right, and a contraption that held my head in place while my eyes followed a flickering blue cross. By the end, I wondered what my eyes had done to deserve all this.
Which is worse, I asked myself, going to the ophthalmologist or the dentist? I’d choose the dentist for one reason: laughing gas. Why ophthalmologists don’t offer it is beyond me.
We depend on our vision for everything. Reading. Driving. Recognizing faces. Finding our way around.
As we get older, our eyesight may become less reliable just when our perspective on life is getting clearer. The world can look fuzzier even as we understand it better. Maybe that’s one of aging’s stranger bargains: we lose some sharpness in what we see just as we gain it in how we see.
Of course, I wasn’t thinking philosophically at the ophthalmologist’s office. I just wanted to know what was wrong. My ophthalmologist diagnosed the pain and blurriness as inflammation.
Jackson Browne’s “Doctor My Eyes” explores another kind of seeing: what happens when you’ve witnessed pain and disappointment. He wonders whether taking it all in without breaking down is strength — or whether he has simply stopped feeling what he sees.
You might not guess any of that from the music. “Doctor My Eyes” practically bounces along. The music tells one story while the lyrics tell another.
Maybe that’s why I love it. Life can work that way, too. Sometimes the music is upbeat even when the lyrics aren’t.
I grew up with an excellent role model for keeping the music going when the lyrics take a darker turn. My Auntie Delly was a take-charge dynamo who believed in tackling problems head-on. She had limited patience for people who complained nonstop about their ailments. As she put it: “Why complain? It doesn’t do any good.”
Lately, though, I’ve started thinking that maybe complaining can do some good after all. Perhaps it does if it leads to action, understanding, or even a laugh. Still, there’s complaining — and complaining. I say no to the Debbie Downer brand of morose monologues.
As for my vision, I developed a new problem: floaters. Black polka dots filled my field of vision, making text look as if I were reading through a swarm of gnats. White backgrounds brought the whole swarm out in force, so I had to cut way back on reading and writing.
Joan Axelrod-Contrada is a writer who lives in Florence with her two dogs. Sign up for her free quarterly newsletter — complete with links to bonus content such as music videos and fun facts — by emailing her at joanaxelrodcontrada@gmail.com.