Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Dropping back into the seventies again. I’ve always enjoyed the southern rock style. Although the blues draw me like the sound of a can opening draws cats, the likes of Marshal Tucker, the Charlie Daniels Band, and Lynyrd Skynyrd all provided some smooth Top 40 enticements. This one, “Heard It In A Love Song,” by M.T. is one of those.
The song’s lyrics talk to me. The main chorus is about hearing truth in a love song, while the rest of the stanzas regard moving on after being with a woman for a while. That seemed like a popular romantic nature for men: I love you, but I gotta go, because of who I am. Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On” is a little similar, except the lyrics call for him to ramble on to find the queen of his dreams.
I guess it’s all about restlessness, searching, and the inability to search if you stay in one place. Bruce Hornsby plays piano on this while that’s Eubanks with that sweet flute.
Meowgination (catfinition) – Imagining something terrible has happened because of the manner in which a cat meows.
Ah, The Band. Oddly, I was reminded of them when I was attending a Veteran’s Day Concert presented by the Southern Oregon Concert Band. Besides the Star Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful, a medley of Irving Berlin, World War I music, Aaron Copeland songs, and John Philip Sousa were presented, along with each of the U.S. military services’ march songs.
But I walked away thinking about The Band, and this song, “The Weight.” Perhaps it was because the concert program reminded me of my youth. Mired in the middle of my early growth was a little event folks call Woodstock. Part of it was “The Weight.” The song has a folksy sense that reminds me of a Faulkner album and makes me smile. I always thought of it as good road music, with questions without answers, answers without explanations, and anecdotes with gravity that give shape to our lives and change our hopes.
Hope you find something in it, too.
Problem: You are walking at four miles per hour, approaching a crosswalk that is thirty feet away.
A car is coming toward you at twenty-six miles per hour. It is three hundred feet away from the crosswalk.
Which of you will reach the crosswalk first?
Answer: The car. They’ll speed up to ensure they won’t need to stop for you at the crosswalk.
And I think of things that I’ve overlooked that need to be added, and events that would surprise the reader, and recognize that I want to add it to the story, but it doesn’t go in this book, but actually, OMG, the end of the second book, so it leads into the third book. I’m halfway – only halfway – through writing the first book. The second book is written but needs some wiring changes. The third book – I hadn’t thought about a third book before, but it started blooming like a volunteer posy. Am I supposed to uproot the thing?
No, because my writing excitement gets the better of me. But the series’ evolution forces more work upon me. The excitement becomes almost paralyzing, because I stop to let the evolution flow in. Sitting still in a sea of external noise and activity, I can look down the long tunnel through the rest of the first book, past the second book, and into the third book.
Now, here’s the tricky part. I can see and hear these events. They must be captured in words. More than that, I need to navigate unseen scenes that bridge now and then, and find the words, pacing, nuances, etc., to bring it all home. I love this part of thinking and writing. I feel all those wires connecting and gears turning. Illumination falls on new aspects and spreads. This is the essence of art, writing, music, and physics, for me, to think, to see, to think more to understand, and see more. It’s an unwinding coil without beginning or end, a Möbius strip of existence.
Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
The other day, I wrote a short post, “End Game.” I’ve been amused by the position that people won’t accept other genders because, God, and the Bible, or some other deity and religious document. I assumed that were it true that a deity created the original one or two sexes, they may now have decided to add more sexes. I assumed they could agree with that.
That might be a wrong assumption.
After posting that, I read an article about conservative American thinking in Salon. I infer from the article that Conservatives have a difficult time accepting change. So if God created two sexes and stopped, that’s it; the end. That chokes the life out of my position. They were taught one thing, so they believe one thing, and they can’t change their thinking to believe anything else. It’s a fascinating conclusion, because it’s not about politics or religious beliefs, but about brain structure and how our brains develop and work.
That leads to another assumption, embraced by so many, that we are all the same. An intriguing dichotomy arises: if you have a hard-wired conservative brain and were taught that everyone is the same, then you can’t change your mind, and yet you’re the very evidence that we’re not all the same. That explains why so many conservatives will drop back and point to differences in gender and sexual orientation as either choices or sicknesses. They can’t conceive of the third choice, that either their God has more in mind for the sexes and variations for humans, or that humans continue to develop and evolve. Like generals fighting the last war, their thinking is predicated on the past situation. To think that gender changes might be required for humanity’s survival is unthinkable, and unimaginable.
Now we’re entering X-Men territory. Yet, medical science can point to evolutionary changes and mutations beyond genders and sexual orientations that indicate, yes, human beings are dynamic and evolving. Changes have emerged, and will continue to emerge. Unfortunately, my recent reading about conservative thinking is that they have a hard time with science, too.
The way we learn has an impact, as well. We’ve learned that what we first learn often stays with us; it’s difficult to overcome what we initially learn, even when new information is later added that shows that we initially learned was wrong. Part of this also has to do with with our brains, memory, and wiring.
I wish I was more intelligent and better educated so I could understand and explain it all with more clarity and nuance. Sadly, I ponder if humans might end up destroying humanity trying to stay the same as were were when they believe they were created.
I hope that I’m just assuming the worst.
So many times, people, companies, and nations develop a work-around, and then accept it as a final solution. Perhaps you know of people who took a temporary position and was still in that position twenty years later. That’s often the classic.
I’m thinking about it today because many work-arounds we’ve developed have been accepted as permanent solutions, but now the problems are being revealed. Fossil fuel is one, water use is a second, and recycling is another. In our town, we’ll start paying more money per month for our recycling. They’re calling the two to three dollars a month extra a surcharge. I rarely notice surcharges going away, myself, but maybe I’m myopic or cynical about it. Whenever I think of surcharges, I think of the airline fuels surcharge.
We’re paying more for recycling here because the Chinese are rejecting our output. It’s too dirty for our standards. Recycling companies are claiming they’re already losing money because supply and demand, and the cost of cleaning the recycling – which uses water.
No, I don’t have the answers. Each individual product and service needs to be addressed. Some are gaining the focus that they need, but, hey, time and money, right?
You ever get rid of something, and forget that you had, and then spent time looking for it before giving up, telling yourself, “Well, I must have gotten rid of it.”?
No, not me. Never, right? Right.
Something from nineteen seventy-seven. Billy Joel had already established himself as a star by this year, but his album, “The Stranger,” gained him critical acclaim, awards, and increased popularity.
I enjoy the album. It came out the year I returned from my fifteen month assignment in the Philippines. The album seems like rock and roll and Americana. My favorite song is one called “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant,” but the album includes “She’s Always A Woman,” “Just The Way You Are,” and “Only The Good Die Young.”
However, I woke up streaming, “Movin’ Out.” The song expresses Joel’s disappointment with people moving up by buying consumer grades and making purchases to impress others. It’s a favorite theme for me, so here we are.
Michael Seidel, writer 