Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
This song popped up from the memory banks into the active stream yesterday as I was hurrying along. I have to get this done so that I can get home and get that done, I thought. Better get running. (It’s a mode that I dislike – run and get things done – anathema to my general philosophy.) A second later, JoJo Gunn’s 1972 song, “Run, Run, Run” was there.
Not much to the song, really. Some pleasant slide work, a fast beat, lyrics about running.
A flashback morning took place. Had an early morning appointment down the highway. I avoid early mornings and appointments. I don’t mind getting up as long as I can leisurely sip coffee, read, goof-off, and dress. If you force me into the shower and clothes early, I’m a recalcitrant beast.
Did that for years. Military periods in command posts in the winter meant I’d go into the building before dark and come back out after dark, a day without sunshine. Marketing years meant hitting the road for early flights, slumbering and working on planes, and then into a rental car to hunt my way around the city. Meanwhile, there was always The Commute, the buzz along highways filled with like buzzing drones, racing to our work hives like frantic little bees.
So being in the car on the road before sunrise (which isn’t that early, between the time shift and time of year) (so, setting the stage with more specific info, this was 7:30 AM), zipping through rain and lumbering along with other traffic (what the hell is going on up there? Why aren’t we moving?) made it seem like old times.
Radio selection helped turn it into a jumpback in time. When “Roam” by the B52s hit the air, I cranked it up and motored like it was 1989. ‘Course, it also reminded me of Ricky Wilson’s passing (1985, 32 years old), kicking in reflections about what age is considered acceptable to die? I concluded, we’re all going to die, but that doesn’t make it okay, at any age, for any reason.
Yeah, tilting against death, nature, etc., It’s a quixotic mission.
I don’t know what’s going on with my subconscious these days (it’s like it’s keeping me in the dark) but it pulled out a couple more unusual songs for my streaming enjoyment this morning.
First was an old show staple, “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”, which I know from the movie, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (with Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, and a bunch of male actors), which came out three years before I was born (yeah, I know Carol Channing song it before that, and I think Mom might have had it on a record). I know the movie (and song) from the miracle of modern television and shows like “Sunday Afternoon at the Movies”. Madonna’s “Like A Virgin” (1984) then leaped into the stream. As I was processing those songs, the stream switched to Adam Ant’s “Goody Two Shoes” (1982).
That’s where it’s now stopped.
I had to look up who did this song. It had wormed into my stream and was totally fixed. A fine song, to be sure, but I don’t know why it’s in my head this morning.
From my head to yours, here are the Contours with a song that you may’ve heard before (if you be old enough), “Do You Love Me”, from 1962. Meanwhile, I’m gonna continue to ruminate on why I was singing this song to myself this morning when I got out of bed.
Today’s song came out of yesterday’s apres writing session. Striding along, thinking about what had been written and what was to be, a conservation was struck up between a character and her aunt. Her aunt told the younger character, “Oh, honey, your mother won’t dance. No anymore.” Which implied to the young one, something had happened to her mother, or her had changed, because of how it was expressed (but the aunt wasn’t saying anything else).
From that, though, came a song from my childhood, Loggins and Messina with “Your Mama Don’t Dance), a lively 1972 song with a throwback sound. Most people probably know it because it’s been around close to fifty years.
Another song which entered my stream this morning and just lodged itself. A worthy song, sure, and one that I’m familiar with, but not my ‘type’ of preferred music. Of course I know it; pop music was less divided back in 1976 when this song came out, with fewer stations. Generally, in the places were I was, there were two or three news/talk format, two or three pop/rock stations, a local NPR station, a sports station, light adult contemporary, a jazz station, several religious stations, and a couple of country and western. My car had six presets, so I had my favorites on there and went back and forth, punching the button with a finger when something I didn’t want to hear came on.
Nevertheless, so songs were overpowering popular, that they were heard everywhere, all the time. Besides hearing them on the radio, they’d be on television. People played them on their car cassette players, record players at home, and 8-track players.
This song, “Don’t Cry Out Loud”, performed by Melissa Manchester, seemed like it was one of them.
Still raining.
Still walking in it.
Still fun — or pleasant — but a little less so than yesterday or the day before.
Smoke was rising from the hillside, leftover from the controlled burns in the watershed the other day. But I thought, yeah, maybe someone set fire to the rain.
So then I was thinking about Adele’s song, “Set Fire to the Rain” (2011), a powerful, powerful song about love, relationships, and re-birth. I (probably like many) enjoy her refrain:
But there’s a side to you that I never knew, never knew
All the things you’d say, they were never true, never true
And the games you’d play, you would always win, always win
That’s what you find as you go through relationships, the pieces that aren’t revealed, whose revelations (when found) fundamentally shift your thoughts (and feelings) about the other, leaving you to ask yourself (as you search), what do I do?
Sometimes you walk on, sometimes you stay, but the relationship has been changed.
It was a rainy night so I started humming the Eurythmics song, “Here Comes the Rain Again” (1983). So sorry they broke up but bands have their own cycles of life, death, and creation.
I enjoyed the construction and sensibilities of these lines in the song:
Here comes the rain again
Falling on my head like a memory
Falling on my head like a new emotion
I want to walk in the open wind
I want to talk like lovers do
want to dive into your ocean
Is it raining with you?
I happened to be walking in the open wind and remembering walking in the rain, alone, something that I enjoy. A sharp cold wind was knifing across my cheeks, and I breathed it all in with joy, satisfaction, and nostalgia. Then the clouds broke and there was that brill full moon, coming on like a spotlight. With clouds skipping past the moon’s surface and the wind quickening, it seemed like the moon sprinted across the sky, a trick of the mind. Clouds closed over the moon, and the rain came again.
Is it raining with you?
Checking out a faded stop sign, I thought, man, that thing has lost almost all its color. If it wasn’t for its shape, I wouldn’t know what it is. So, yea for the shape of a stop sign, serving its purpose to let you know what it is in all sorts of conditions.
Winding along the road further down, I thought that I’d been on that road a few times the past week, chuckling to myself about it. Between that thought and the sign, the Sheryl Crow song, “Every Day Is A Winding Road” (1996), crept into my thinking stream.
Yeah, every day is a winding road. Few stay as straightforward as planned. I always think of going with the changes and shifts as, riding the wave of the day. I’d like to think the roads are taking me somewhere, but sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. Sometimes, I feel like I’m in the Dichotomy Paradox, where you keep going half the distance left to go, but never get to the end. In theory, it’s impossible because a journey would then take an infinite number of steps and never end.
Yeah, that pretty well sums up my publishing efforts.
A mellow tune for today, one that I thought of while looking at the mountains across the way. Cold and clear, we were in the shadows on a mountain on the northern side. Over on the southern mountains, sunshine looked warm and inviting. It seemed like two worlds.
I wondered what could bring those worlds together, knowing that those “two worlds” that I saw were one, divided by who was in the shadow. It seemed a proper metaphor for life. People live in the shadow of the information and myths – and sometimes, disinformation and lies – that dominate our world. Amazing how the shadows can affect it.
From that came thoughts of songs about people coming together. There’s a bunch of them that were made in the 1960s, a time when trying to come together seemed important to many artists. Out of the pool, “Get Together” by the Youngbloods (1967) rose to the top and took over the stream.
Michael Seidel, writer 