As the sparks and embers from the fire danced up into the night sky, someone pulled out a guitar and started to play. It was late at night - well, early in the morning - and this seemed like the perfect way to finish an evening.
There were a bunch of us gathered around the bonfire, most of us good friends, and nobody felt shy about singing along as the guitar player launched into his first tune, a version of The Eagles' "Hotel California".
We all got the first line: "On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair ...". And most of us followed with a somewhat stumbly rendition of the second line: "Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air."
(Can someone tell me what a colita is? I assume it's some sort of plant or flower, or maybe one of those fruity, umbrella-festooned tropical drinks, but I've never run across one. Probably because we don't have deserts in Canada. Or Tiki bars.)
(Also: "warm smell"? Smells are warm? I would think that would be more a function of the ambient temperature. Are there cold smells? )
But we carried on, despite these weighty questions, until the second verse. At that point, some people sang the actual second verse, some started mixing in a lyric from the third verse, and others sort of mumbled: "Something something the courtyard, sweet summer sweat ...".
And those who got it right began to doubt themselves while those who got it wrong realized their mistake and those who were mumbling declined to commit either way and the song started to break down completely when we were all rescued by the chorus, which we launched into lustily: "WELCOME TO THE HOTEL CALIFORNIA ...".
After the chorus, the guitarist tried to keep it going, but by now we were all losing the lyrics, so more and more people began to fall into the "something something" camp. And the song sort of petered out.
I was sitting with a friend, Melody. She looked at me, shrugged, and said, "Campfire music effect."
"Say what?"
"It always happens around a campfire. If you put on that record, I bet every single person here could sing it syllable for syllable. We all know the song. But put us in front of a campfire with a guitar, and we choke."
I was about to argue with her when the guitarist launched into one of my favourite songs ever: "Stand By Me". Who doesn't know every syllable of this classic? So of course, I started singing:
"When the night is dark, and the land is cold, and the moon is the ... something something see ..."
My jaw dropped. I turned to Melody. "Are you kidding me? I know this song. I've been singing it since I was a ... "DARLIN', DARLIN', STAND. BY. ME. ..."
She laughed. "Don't feel bad. It's the campfire effect."
And it happened again and again, song after song. We would start out strong, every one of us ... but by the halfway point the song would degenerate into a jumbled train wreck. Songs that formed the soundtrack to my life, songs I could turn to you right this very moment and recite flawlessly. All of them reduced to "... remember, to something something your skin, then you'll begin to make it better...".
Look, it's not like this guy was playing "MacArthur's Park". There wasn't any complex poetry. This was strictly Baby Boomer classics, and I refuse to believe that every single person around that campfire spontaneously reached senility at the same moment. But we just couldn't make it through a single song.
Finally, the guitarist had had enough. "Okay, all of you. Last chance." And he began playing the single most cliched campfire song on the planet. "Kumbaya". Finally. We couldn't possibly botch this one.
So the first verse began, and I sang out "Someone's singing, my Lord ..."
Melody, right beside me, sang: "Someone's crying, my Lord ..."
"OK, that's it," said the guitarist. He put his instrument away while Melody and I debated who had sung the actual correct lyric (me).
With the guitarist gone, and the fire slowly dying, people started to wander away. And as the flames became red embers glowing in the darkness, I pondered the grand questions of the Universe. Where did we come from? What would become of us? Why do we ... my eyes snapped wide open.
"And the moon is the only sight you'll see!" I shouted triumphantly.
Nobody cared. The night was ending. The campfire was dying down. And so was the campfire effect. The lyrics were all coming back to me.
I only wish the guitarist could have hung around to hear it.
