Featured Essay: Borrowed Tune

by Andy Millman

Madison is bitter this January afternoon. If the cold doesn’t get me, the icy streets just might, so I’m content to walk in the mall. Friends tease that I’m too young to be a mall walker but I don’t care. I like my routine. I walk along the perimeter, in a counter-clockwise direction, for four laps, which takes about forty minutes. Sometimes I see other walkers and we might nod or smile the first time we pass one another, and then, on subsequent passes, we try to find some natural way to avoid eye contact. How many times can you say hello, or goodbye for that matter? 

Today I call Ingrid while I walk. We’ve been friends since high school and though life has taken us to different places, we’ve remained close. She lives in Nashville now, working for Warner Music full-time, editing audio for video games part-time, and singing in between. She’s a remarkable singer and has had some success, even touring around the world with other musicians.  

I ask about her cats. She takes care of her late mother’s cat, Spaulding, and a stray that lives outside a tire shop in downtown Nashville. She calls this one “Little Dude,” or “LD.” Ingrid drives over to bring him food every evening. She says he’s probably never been inside or held by a human being. Over the past year he’s warmed up to her, though, and now greets her when she gets out of her car and even occasionally pushes his head into her open hand. 

Ingrid tells me about a recent doctor’s visit to discuss having a knee replacement.  Because she succeeded in losing a lot of weight, the doctor tells her that the surgery and recovery should be much easier. She’s been saving money to move back to Chicago, where we’re both from, and a new knee will help. Next January will mark ten years since her mom died, which sent Ingrid, with a box of songs and her mother’s cat, to Nashville to try to piece herself back together. We’ve shared many stories about the grief we share over losing our moms. I often tell Ingrid what a wonderful daughter she was, and I do again today. It’s familiar ground and conversation, but I don’t mind repeating myself. Her mom isn’t here to tell her anymore. Ingrid mentions that one of our high school friends contacted her and asked for my number, which she gave him. She hopes I don’t mind and I don’t. I haven’t seen or talked to him in over thirty years. 

Ingrid says she’ll probably be up all night because she needs to finish a project for her video game gig. I bring our conversation to a close and ask that she try to get some sleep. She says she’ll try. Then she says what she always does before we hang up the phone; “I love you, Andy." They will be the last words I’ll ever hear from her.

I assumed Ingrid was older when I met her. She didn’t really lookolder. She had thin, blonde hair and light blue eyes, genetic kisses from her Latvian parents. Her seriousness and talents suggested someone beyond her years. When our theater department staged “Dracula” our freshman year of high school and one of the drama teachers, who was around seventy, was cast as the Count, Ingrid was placed in charge of designing and applying this man’s makeup. Even before seeing him in “Dracula,” I was frightened of him. He was my Theater Workshop teacher and played that part like Vincent Price being directed by Orson Welles, or maybe vice versa. Ingrid was rubbing foundation on his cheeks and painting his lips. I couldn’t imagine even standing close to him. It would be two more years before Ingrid and I really interacted with one another. I was given a bit part in a student variety show and Ingrid was the choral director. She possessed probably the best voice in this school of a couple thousand kids, and could also detect a single off-note in a group of thirty singers and zero in on the culprit. I quickly realized that the best way to get along with her was to sing my parts as softly as possible, preferably emitting no sound at all. Aside from not being able to sing, I also couldn’t dance. During the show’s finale, in which everyone in the cast was arranged in a chorus line, I was placed at the very end, so far to the side that I was actually in the backstage wing where no one could hear or see me except for the stage crew. This all made Ingrid smile and I began to work my way toward her heart, which I’d discover was as tender as her voice. 

The text had been sent early, before I’d awoken, and I had to rub my eyes to read it. There were only four words: “I’m sorry about Ingrid.” It was sent by the high school friend who’d asked Ingrid for my contact information. My heart lurched. Less than two days had passed since we’d talked. You never want to assume the worst, but sometimes it’s hard not to. I called her. The familiar greeting came on. Her voice, as bright and clear as ever, asked me to leave a message. I can’t remember if I did. I turned on my computer, anxious for any information, and fearful of what I might find. The search didn’t take long. Tributes were already posted.  

After high school Ingrid and I went downstate, to the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. We were three hours away from home and each a little miserable in our own ways. One way we shared was a concern for our moms, who were both divorced and now that their youngest children were gone, living alone. We were always open about our love for our moms. Ingrid lived in Allen Hall, on one side of campus, and I was in Illini Tower, on the other. When she’d trek over to visit me, we’d sneak off to a room in my dorm, up a half flight of stairs, where a piano was stored. We would sit next to each other on the piano bench and she would play Joni Mitchell and James Taylor songs. But the song that I remember most, the song that I fell in love with during that time, was her favorite Neil Young song, “Borrowed Tune.” 

Years later I’d be living in Madison and learn that Young had written “Borrowed Tune” while on a tour stop there in 1973. He was holed up in a hotel room with a rented piano, probably a lot like the one at Illini Tower. It was January, the same month, albeit a different year, as when Ingrid died, as well as both our moms. He sang of watching a skater fly by on a frozen lake, which would be Madison’s Lake Mendota. The image would be captured a few years later by his longtime friend and Ingrid’s musical hero, Joni Mitchell, whose album Hejira features a stark, black and white photograph of her skating on that very same lake. 

Ingrid was once in a band called Ladies of the Canyon, the name borrowed from a Joni Mitchell song. The concept was that three female singer-songwriters would pick a female artist or two to cover, rehearse for a few weeks, and then put on a show. I saw them only once. They were playing at the Wilmette Theater, in the town where Ingrid and I had grown up. On this night they were covering Bonnie Raitt and Carole King. My date for the evening was Ingrid’s mom, Ruta, who by now was a bit frail and unable to drive. She was dressed up and excited to see her daughter perform, just like she’d been when Ingrid and I were in high school. On the ride over, Ruta spoke in her soft Latvian accent about Ingrid’s love for music and how Ruta wished it were easier to make a living doing what you love to do. We sat next to each other in the theater and as the show progressed, I could feel something radiating off of Ruta. Jews call it kvelling – to feel intense pride for someone you love. I felt it, too. 

“Borrowed Tune” is on Neil Young’s album Tonight’s the Night, which was recorded in 1973 but not released until 1975. Young was mourning the recent loss of two friends, and the album, which was mostly taped live and in the middle of the night, sounds like a slightly drunken wake. The record is shrouded in the friends’ absence, but their presence is felt also. One is namechecked in the title song and another is heard singing on a track that was resurrected from an earlier concert. When Young initially submitted the record to Warner Brothers, the same company that Ingrid would one day work for, they rejected it. It was too dark. Nearly fifty years later Rolling Stone named Tonight’s the Night one of the 500 best records ever made.

During the darkest time in my life, I called Ingrid from the hospice where my mom had been for the past three months. We didn’t talk long. I stumbled around until she said, “Would you like me to sing at the service?” Yes, that’s exactly what I’d wanted, even if I couldn’t say the words. 

Ingrid sang “Golden Slumbers” at my mom’s funeral. I’d considered “Borrowed Tune” (of course I had), but didn’t feel it was right. That song meant something to me and to Ingrid, but not to my mom, and probably not to anyone else who’d be at her service. Instead I’d requested “Golden Slumbers,” a song that had worked its way into my head during the prior week. I’d sit beside my mother’s bed and hear Paul McCartney, whose own mom had died when he was only fourteen, sing that lullaby line in my mind – sleep, pretty darling, do not cry – and all I’d want was for my mom to sleep; peacefully, painlessly. Other times I’d hear the beginning of the song, about finding a way to get home back again. I envisioned my mom’s parents waiting for her. I thought of the aunts and uncles and cousins who’d also gone before and might be there. I hoped there was a way for her to get back home again. My flicker of faith had been nearly extinguished, but this was a prayer worth kindling.

Ingrid released one solo album in her career. The album is called Brave Again and I have copies on cassette and CD, even though it can now be streamed on several platforms. Ingrid drew the picture on the cover. A woman is in water, but unlike Joni Mitchell, she’s swimming through it, not skating on top of it. She’s surrounded by sea life and a red bird is perched on her back. Soft moonlight casts a gentle glow on the scene. Ingrid told me that the song “Lilac House,” which is the next to last song on the album, is about her Wilmette house; the house where she’d grown up, the house where she’d thrown a surprise party for me during our senior year in high school, and the house her mom was eventually forced to sell after her divorce. Ingrid, too, dreamed of getting back home again. 

When I steeled myself as best I could to make the calls I needed to make and pass on the news to those who needed to know, I believed one thing even if I didn’t have any confirmation: Ingrid did not take her life. I could hear the question in people’s voices, even when they did not ask. She was in a good place that Sunday. I understood that there can be an elevation in mood before a suicide, but I was confident in my belief. And I knew she would never leave her cats behind. Abandoning Spaulding would be like abandoning her mom. It wouldn’t happen, and a few weeks later I would learn it didn’t. It was something to do with her heart. 

Much of Ingrid’s music is available on the internet. There’s even a version of her singing “Borrowed Tune.” I’ve tried to listen to it since she died but haven’t made it past the first verse. Someday I’ll be able to get all the way through. For now I give myself time. I’m back in the mall again, doing my four laps, listening to podcasts instead of music because my nerves are too raw for music. I’m finding it takes effort to nod or smile to other walkers. Mostly I keep my head down. I have trouble following the podcasts because my thoughts always return to Ingrid. I replay our last conversation like a song I keep rewinding, but mostly the ending, her final words, words I’d heard her say a thousand times but only once for the last time. When spring comes I’ll take a break from the mall. I’ll walk to the lake, the one that Neil Young and Ingrid sang about, the one whose ice Joni Mitchell skated upon, and I’ll say a quiet thank you for the thaw. 

Andy Millman lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where he leads writing groups for older adults. He appeared with Ingrid in a high school production of “The Pajama Game,” where she played the lead and he played her father, who neither sung nor danced. 

Ingrid Graudins was an award-winning singer and songwriter. Her version of Neil Young’s song “Borrowed Tune” can be heard here: ingrid graudins - “borrowed tune” by Neil Young at SPACE 1/23/2011