It was on the summer of ’69 when she met her. When her life, she thought, was on the brink of collapsing. In fact, it was. No thanks to the people whom she built her dreams around with and who tore it down in what seemed like a blink of an eye. Coldly, mercilessly, instantaneously. As though it wasn’t important to them just as it was to her. She hated that. She hated how they took it from her as easy as that, snatching it from her as though they didn’t know any better. She hated them. She had never hated anyone before in her life. Not even the rowdy public in some of the pubs they had been to that think they should have power over them because they were minorities and it was kinda funny because she loved them - those two - just as much as they loved her, when everything was still perfect. Because love wouldn’t hurt, would it? Or was she wrong about that, too? Just like how she was wrong about them? Because what they did was beyond repair, she believed. Her soul, she knew right then and there, would never be the same again. They took something from her and the damage was irreparable. Or so she thought.
Sixty-nine was an eventful year and it was just as momentous for Roseanne Park as it was for the rest of the world, most probably. There was so much firsts and lasts in the year of ’69 and hers wasn’t any different.
Seiko sold the first ever Quartz watch. Sesame Street debuted on public television. The Beatles released their album ‘The Abbey Road’ and performed their final live performance on the roof of the Apple building in London. Rumor has it that it was there that John Lennon announced that he wanted to ‘divorce’ Paul, George and Ringo. And on the twenty-fourth of May, The Beatles’ hit song Get Back peaked at number one on the Billboards and it was probably the ‘first’ that mattered to Roseanne Park. Because she couldn’t care less about the New York Jets winning the Super Bowl in Miami, or that dude who killed Kennedy was finally paying his due. In Rosie’s world, if it wasn’t about music and rock and roll and classic guitars and anything that would feed her soul – which basically was music - and her band, Rosie and the Gang, she didn’t want anything to do with. She couldn’t even really care less about the first man landing on the moon. Although, it was fascinating when she heard about it the first time. Fascinating, in the sense that she could write a whole song about it and it could maybe help them steer towards the right direction. Because if it was monumental to mankind that a man had stepped his foot on the moon, then it would be just as monumental to them – her and the guys – to use that monumental moment to their advantage and make something monumental out of it, like finally landing a record deal.
A record deal would be her ticket to get out of Burns. To finally make a living while doing what she loved best and not just flipping burger patties, serving milkshakes and folding table napkins on weeknights, while waiting impatiently for the weekend to come so that she could be with the guys for the rest of the night and they’d be driving around town, hopping from one pub to another, doing gig after gigs and then retiring the night exhausted but euphoric from the shows, and then doing the same shit all over again. Her life, if anything, was ordinary and monotonous despite the noise at the pubs and the small crowd gathering before them on weekend gigs. She was stuck and she hated feeling like she was. Probably because it was the truth.
If the moon was conquered through science and man’s persistence, then the world was surely just as accessible by whatever means. And she meant music. Her music. She dreamed of taking the world through music. She wanted it so bad that most of the time she would daydream about it, trying to feel what it would be like to just be out there and live that kind of life, and then she’d have a huge, sweet smile on her face after. It was gratifying. She would imagine how surreal it would become when the world would finally hear about her, listen to her music and speak her name like an oath. She had already long decided that her stage name would be Rose. Sweet, beautiful, captivating, fascinating, enigmatic and red. She had already long decided that she would don a red hair. She was donning a red hair for as long as she could remember. Bright, vivid, loud, a wandering, free soul. She wanted it to be her identity, her red hair. People would think about how red it was when they’d hear her name.
