on the sight and sound of missing you
We had MTV when I was very young and we were living in the suburbs of Chicago. Images from a few of the videos I saw as a child left indelible impressions on me. The painted face of Peter Gabriel in the video for “Shock the Monkey” (a song about jealousy); the snake in the shower in the video for “Owner of a Lonely Heart” by Yes; all the mechanical legs and heads of Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit.”
Less musically and visually adventurous were the song and video for John Waite’s “Missing You,” but it was a song my mom loved, and the image of the phone being smashed to bits joined the others in my mind, something I would recall when feeling a certain way.


I thought of the song when I was in Thailand and found this version from a few years ago, a duet between original singer John Waite and Alison Krauss.
Their approaches to the song and its emotions are so different. John Waite lets the longing flood into his voice, while the sadness sits inside Alison. You can see it in their faces, too. My favorite moment in the video is at the end, when Alison is walking away.

The intensity in John’s face throughout suggests he’s fighting the way things are, while the wistfulness on Alison’s face seems to say, “So it goes.” It’s as if life has already taught her, as Masha Tupitsyn has said we are taught, that life is about learning to split up with people, and she has accepted it.
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