Category: memories

Monday’s Theme Music

War.

Climate change. Natural disasters.

COVID-19 pandemic. Rising deaths.

Black lives matter. Police brutality. Corruption. Protests. Riots. Looting. Tear gas.

Murder hornets. Asteroid heading for Earth. Forty thousand year old worms dug up, thawed out, and living again.

2020 is seen by many to be a year of worsening situations. Many read something new happening, fill with dread and ask, “Oh, no, is another disaster about to strike the planet?”

Chuckling to myself over this today, Europe’s song, “The Final Countdown” (1986) entered my musical memory stream.

The song is about leaving Earth, but you know, just pause a mo’ and shift words around, and it’ll work for this year.

If we need a theme song for this year, maybe this is it. Maybe it is the final countdown, not to leaving, but to another crisis.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

A quiet day for me, providing an interlude for reflection. After watching the news, contemplating history and contrasting them with current events, Neil Young’s song, “Old Man” (1972).

Old man look at my life,
I’m a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I’m a lot like you were.

Old man look at my life,
Twenty four
and there’s so much more
Live alone in a paradise
That makes me think of two.

Love lost, such a cost,
Give me things
that don’t get lost.
Like a coin that won’t get tossed
Rolling home to you.

Old man take a look at my life
I’m a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that’s true.

Lullabies, look in your eyes,
Run around the same old town.
Doesn’t mean that much to me
To mean that much to you.

I’ve been first and last
Look at how the time goes past.
But I’m all alone at last.
Rolling home to you.

h/t to AZLyrics.com

I picked this acoustic version for its simplicity, and because Young is young in it, and alone, unvarnished, on the stage with his guitar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An2a1_Do_fc
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Are You Outraged?

Someone else wrote a blog titled, “Are You Outraged?” And I thought, am I outraged?

Let’s see. I was born in 1956, eleven years after WW II, but while the conflict in Korea was happening, and as the U.S. was getting drawn into Vietnam.

The Cold War was going strong. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. were ready to launch nukes and drop nukes at the slightest provocation.

1960 began strong, with John F. Kennedy getting elected. He promised to put a man on the moon. Meanwhile, protests and riots began. The 1960s were full of blood and smoke. Kennedy was assassinated; so was his brother. And Martin Luther King, Jr. Many blacks were lynched and murdered. Battles were fought over segregation, “Separate but equal”, and desegregation.

As races fought for equality, so did women, but the Equal Rights Amendment stalled.

The arms race sucked up resources and attention. Korean and Vietnam were ‘ended’ as conflicts, but more conflicts sprang up. War has not ceased in my lifetime, despite the fall of the U.S.S.R. Instead, it’s intensified.

As has the battle for equal rights and the ideal that skin color, sexual orientation, religious preferences, and genders should not matter, that we, as a nation, are only as strong as the weakest among us, so we must protect them.

The battle for the environment has intensified, too, and with it, the understanding that this is one world, and once again, in order to survive, we must survive together, and protect our planet, or we may all suffer, and many of us will perish, bringing our civilization to our knees.

These seem like self-evident truths, but instead, another war has arisen, this one about what constitutes truths, facts, science, and evidence. The way that numbers and words are spun to create division and distraction spins my head.

Am I outraged? Fucking yes. After a lifetime of this, I thought we’d be further advanced. But as I watch the police brutality and government response to the murders and protests, echoes of history reverberate. I’m reminded of the tanks in Hungary in 1956 as the Soviet Union crushed an uprising.

I’m reminded of the Watts riots.

I’m reminded of Tienanmen Square in 1989.

I’m reminded of the Berlin Wall.

I’m reminded of Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, and Detroit, Michigan.

I’m reminded of the American Civil War.

I’m reminded of the rise of Solidarity in Poland.

I’m reminded of Ferguson.

I’m reminded of the Democratic National Convention in 1968.

I’m reminded of Kent State in 1970.

I’m reminded of countless sit-ins and marches against war and for peace, against injustice and for equality.

I’m reminded of so many events that I’ve seen and read of in the narrow focus of my short life, and I’m reminded of so many who live in fear and suffer at the hands of those who are supposed to serve and protect.

Am I outraged?

I watch the news, play the viral videos, and read the articles this week and wonder why so many fight against others’ equality. I wonder how so many can be so cruel to fellow humans. The outright cruelty and disregard demonstrated as police officers spray, beat, shoot, and mistreat their fellow citizens, their fellow humans, horrifies me.

Am I outraged?

I am sickened. I am saddened. I am furious.

Yes, I am outraged.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Many songs that I remember have specific moments attached. They follow traditional, predictable patterns of love, success, pain, and failure.

Today’s song is hotly linked to success. It was 1999. Retired from the military, I was working in a medical device startup company. I began as the customer service manager. Then the company was bought out. And on this day, the new VP of marketing from the company who bought us had offered me a big promotion, to become a product manager, and I’d accepted.

The world looked great. This was in the summer in the Peninsula portion of the SF Bay Area known as Silicon Valley. I was in my car, a vehicle I enjoyed The sky was blue, the sun was bright and warm, and the future seemed amazing.

Traffic wasn’t bad either, as I left Highway 101 and I-280 behind me and headed west toward home on highway 92. For that day, I put in Bush, Sixteen Stone, and selected “Comedown” (1995).

Here are the lyrics that drew me that day:

‘Cause I don’t wanna come back down from this cloud
It’s taken me all this time to find out what I need
I don’t wanna come back down from this cloud
It’s taken me all this all this time

h/t AZlyrics.com

(BTW, I wanted to indent the lyrics to call them out, but can’t find the indent on this new, cumbersome, tedious, loaded WP editor. This is supposed to be a quick post; I don’t want to spend a lot of time searching through blocks and patterns, widgets and menus to find what used to be a simple matter. And where is the help? Oh, let me look for that.)

Don’t have a specific reason for this song in my head today. Just awoke to that beginning from the song. Maybe it was a dream thing, or a writing thing, or my generally foolish, optimistic nature.

But that’s today’s music.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

I’m in the midst of a rebellion this morning. It began when my mind shouted, “No more news! Just back away for a little bit. Please do it. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Carefully, I backed away from my mind, eyeing it as I did, trying to gauge its temperament. “Is everything okay?” An innocuous question, I thought.

Too innocuous. “Is everything okay?” My mind launched into a rant that went in every direction at once. I let it rant, biding my time, until the rant petered out for lack of oxygen.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. No Facebook for a bit.”

“For the day!”

“Fine, fine, and no news? Really? You want to — “

“Stop.” My mind’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t try to guilt me, dude. I won’t have it.”

“I’m not trying to guilt you.”

My mind scoffed. “Sure. Who do you think you’re talking to? Your asshole? I’m your mind, baby. I know you better than you know me.”

I’ve been in these situations before. Time and space were demanded, needed. I would accommodate my mind. “Okay, then. What sort of theme song should I use today?”

My mind glowered for moments. Dark emotions flit over its face. Suddenly, like sunshine had burst through, he brightened. “Spin Doctors. “Little Miss Miss”, 1992.”

“Really?” I remembered when it came out. I was stationed at Onizuka AFB, then called an Air Station, in Sunnyv —

“Stop.”

“What?”

“No trips down memory lane. I don’t want to do any of that bullshit today. Just play the song and write the post.”

I nodded. “Okay, chum, you got it.”

My mind faked a gag. “Don’t call me chum.”

And that’s how today’s theme music selection was made.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Back to life for today’s music.

Reading, hearing, and thinking about many black people’s comments yesterday and this morning, I realize (again, sadly) how often they live in tension and fear.

Yet, so many whites do as well – as witnessed by them recorded on videos calling police on blacks just because they’re black.

Blacks have a foundation for their fears; we’ve seen too many videos of police applying unnecessary force and violence on black people, or white people getting away with violence against black people, because, white…black.

As we watch and protest, counter-protest, or hold our breaths and wait, I thought about people and praying, and stumbled into Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer” (1986). The song is about a couple who have nothing but each other, who are hoping to make it together. As noted many times, the song was written during the Reagan era as trickle-down economics were touted. As we know, trickle-down is a bullshit theory that enables the wealthy to get wealthier and provides a cop-out to others, permitting them to issue tax cuts to the wealthy without remorse. (Yeah, and it certainly worked during the coronaivirus in America, as the wealthier managed to increase their wealth while a huge swath of Americans struggle between buying food or paying rent/house payments.)

Anyway…

Seems like, with high-unemployment, a corrupt Republican administration, continuing police brutality and militarization, protests, looting, riots, and then natural disasters AND the novel coronavirus, many in the United States are living on a prayer.

And that’s why it’s today’s theme music.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Watching the riots remind me of my youth. Born in 1956 in the U.S., we had riots frequently in the sixties.

This month’s riot began when George Floyd, a black man, was apprehended by police, and died, allegedly for something involving forged documents.

Death by police officer is surely the response for such a heinous suspicion, right?

Watching police brutality in 1971, Obie Benson questioned what he was seeing. With Al Cleveland and Marvin Gaye, the thoughts were put into a song that became a Marvin Gaye hit. At that time, protesters were standing up against the Vietnam War. Police, demonstrating the restraint that we’ve come to know well from them, waded in, resulting in what became known as “Bloody Thursday”.

We’ve seen it many times; protests arise. Unless you’re white and armed (see Michigan this year), the police are gonna come hard. (Didn’t help that the POTUS (ever thoughtful and considered in his response) said, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” quoting the Miami police chief from the 1967 riots).

The government is by the people and for the people, until the people speak up against the government (unless, again, you’re armed and white in the woke United States) (witness the frequency of armed white males killers with automatic weapons being peacefully apprehended), then look out, people.

Marvin Gaye’s song says it well:

[Verse 1]
Mother, mother
There’s too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There’s far too many of you dying
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some loving here today, yeah

[Verse 2]
Father, father
We don’t need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some loving here today

[Chorus]
Picket lines and picket signs
Don’t punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what’s going on
What’s going on
Yeah, what’s going on
Ah, what’s going on

h/t Genius.com.

BTW, this post was created with the new WP editor. Initial question: WTF did it need to change? Evolutionary improvements, I understand. I thought the other was an intuitive system. Now they want me to ‘insert blocks’, which include such common blocks such as ‘paragraphs’. Christ.

Their little floating block editor jumps in front of text, forcing you to navigate around it to see WTF is going on.

Grrrr.

Here is “What’s Going on”.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Yeah, Trump retweeted the sentiment, “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.”

No matter what political party you are, learning that the nation’s President promotes such unreasoning violence and ideals contrary to the nation’s principles is, well, sickening. Is this how the country is united? Is that really the best course to promote as riots break out in cities over another black man’s death as he begged the police officer holding him down, as our nation passes one hundred six thousand deaths from the coronavirus, a time when we should be pulling together, where everyone insists, “We’re in this together?”

While I often hear screams from those on the right about how Democrats are not civil and should respect the President and treat him with courtesy, how can I — why would I? — when he’s encouraging murder against the political opposition?

So, the song by Badfinger, “No Matter What” (1970), arrives in my brain. No matter what is fused directly to getting Trump out of office; no matter what Biden does, I will vote for him, a position that I hate to take. Biden isn’t my first, second, or third choice. I grimace thinking about it, having my thought processes and principles reduced to that single point: vote Trump out. Sickening and infuriating. Biden, if elected, will probably do a decent job, but I really want to advance the nation and world past the status quo where we muddle from crises to crises, issue to issue, putting bandages on problems while rot spreads.

No matter what also comes up as I write my way through this pandemic. No matter what, I’ll write. No matter what, I’ll pursue my dreams.

No matter what, I’ll go on.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Yeah, reading the news, following the latest Trumpstorm (“Unfair! I’m shutting down twitter!”), and articles about states under reporting COVID-19 case numbers and deaths (in other words, let’s pretend it’s not so bad, and it’ll all be okay), and another senseless killing (George Floyd – so how was forging a check a threat to those four officers, and why did that fucker keep his knee on his neck when Floyd said, “I can’t breathe”?), with subsequent protests and rioting, while bots push the re-open buttons and people scream about rights (and mock about privilege), and we wait to see what the fuck is going to happen next, Ratt’s classic hit song, “Round and Round” (1984), plays on an endless loop:

“Round and round; what goes around, comes around, I’ll tell you why. Dig.”

Yes, definitely the theme music for today.

 

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music came after reviewing my dreams. Empowering dreams, I enjoyed them, in part because they seemed fuller and more coherent than the last few sleeps’ fragile fragments. As I thought about them and the almost one eighty shift in lucidity, I thought, the dream police must’ve stepped in, which gave me a chuckle.

Like that, the brain said, “Oh, “The Dream Police” by Cheap Trick,” and began playing it like it was Alexa gone nuts.

So, I went with it. 1979: a good year to be young and getting older. Amusing video. I don’t think I’ve heard this song in a looonnnggg time.

 

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