Kurt writes:
I was both excited and apprehensive about having a love song written for Anne and me. Excited for the obvious (egocentric) reasons. Apprehensive because I'm semi-unsentimental and fairly private about my personal life. But the proximity and symmetry of my childhood and Anne's in the 
1950s and 60s had always struck me as somehow significant: suburban middle-class Omaha (me)and suburban middle-class Kansas City (her), both youngest children of civilized, sweet-tempered lawyers who'd grown up poor in small towns in Nebraska (me) and Kansas (her) and charismatic, strong-willed mothers who'd grown up in the big(gish) cities where they raised each of us. Also, rivers always enthralled and frightened me as a child. So Corey's extremely romantic, magical realist idea for his song -- me leaping into the Missouri River to be carried 200 miles downstream and rescued by Anne -- struck me as splendidly, unexpectedly perfect when I heard it. As it did Anne.
Had I Jumped (for Anne from Kurt)*
It was my first blind date
And also my last
A boy and a girl from almost parallel states
A boy and a girl with almost parallel pasts
In fact had I jumped into the Missouri River
In Omaha when I was seventeen
And had it carried me down to Kansas City
I bet you would have rescued me
Before we started going gray
Before there was Lucy
Before there was Kate
Before our wedding day
And even before that first date
We didn’t meet
But you were never very far away
And had I jumped into the Missouri River
In Omaha when I was seventeen
And had it carried me down to Kansas City
I bet you would have rescued me
And I would have married you
Then and there
Then and there
Sometimes I wish I wasn’t
So laissez-faire
So laissez-faire
‘Cause had I jumped into the Missouri River
In Omaha when I was seventeen
And let it carry me down to Kansas City
I bet you would have rescued me
I bet you would have rescued me
*"Had I Jumped (for Anne from Kurt)" was commissioned by Public Radio International’s Studio 360.
words and music by Corey Dargel (except as noted)
artwork by Marisol Limon Martinez
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