Category: memories

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music straight out of my dreams.

“I’m Going to Sit Right Down and Write Myself A Letter” has a remarkably long title. It came out in 1935, twenty-one years before I was born. It’s one of those songs that’s been sung throughout my life, covered by everyone from Fats Waller to Frank, Dean, Tony, and Paul McCartney, Sarah Vaughn, Madeleine Peyroux, and Tony Danza.

I recall a distinct swing version. I suspect from its style and where it registers in my memories that it came out in the mid-sixties. I sought it on the net, and I couldn’t find it. Frank Sinatra? Tony Bennett? Nat King Cole? No, no, no. Their versions all sounded too prozac mellow.

After listening to many, I decided to go with a Nat King Cole recording, even though it’s not the one that I remember.

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Monday’s Theme Music

When I think of “Jungle Love”, I usually think of Steve Miller first. His song came out in 1977.

But today, I’m mentally streaming a song that came out over six years later. Performed and released by the Time, “Jungle Love” is a funk-pop rock tune with a terrific chorus and Prince playing several of the musical instruments. The song’s beat always gets me moving, which was useful for today. Two cups of coffee wasn’t enough to get me dressed and out of the house. “Jungle Love” pushed me further.

Hope you enjoy it (enjoy it), (oh we oh we oh).

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Reading an old Jack Reacher last night (new to me – from 2008) and for some reason, I began streaming the Red Hot Chili Peppers “Around the World” (1999). The Reacher novel, Nothing to Lose, reminded me of some places where I’d been stationed and things that were discussed, done, heard about, witnessed, that sort of thing, you know, the whole been around the world thing.

I’ve not been all around the world, or even all around America. Besides, in the military, and then in marketing, you really don’t see much of the world. For me, I was often flown in, put into a place, typically there for a few days, doing my thing. If it’s a longer time period, chances to explore were found, but many times, it was in and out, and then on to the next place. Funny, looking back, how often I traveled alone, often in a unique role, briefly joining some group of strangers, and then gone again.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Power ballads were streaming through me this morning, partly triggered by dreams, but also television shows I’ve been watching, like “Letterkenny”, “Future Man”, and “The Umbrella Academy” besides the latest season of “Vera”. Out of the songs I’m feeling, the old INXS standby, “Never Tear Us Apart” (1988) took the spot as today’s theme song.

The dream side of things featured a major devotion to writing, especially the final dream chapter. Working on April Showers 1921, I’m at a five-pointed intersection, asking myself, “Which way do we go, George, which way do we go?” The final dream had a very nice sit-down interview with myself in which I was two ages, one in his twenties and the other in his seventies. They were discussing the pros and cons of different ideas, along with the risks, and comparisons to other novels. Awakening from that chapter seemed seamless. They made a decision and finished the interview, and I picked up the germinating thinking when I awoke.

‘Nuff written. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

“‘Cause I’d rather feel pain than nothing at all.”

It’s an old cliché. I think I’ve seen it in movies multiple times.

I was thinking all that yesterday when a character said that. Another character said, “Cliché,” and the third character said, “Three Days Grace, “Pain”, 2007.”

I gave the character help, looking the date up for him. He’s supposed to know these things, but he came up short (cliché!). I always think Three Days Grace could be a rock group from the previous century. Well, honestly, that’s when they started, so, it fits.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

My wife gets credit for this one. She’s singing a few choruses from it as she goes about her day, so my stream took off and ran with the rest of the song.

From the good ol’ days of 1979, here’s Queen with “Don’t Stop Me Now”.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

I was thinking about the our entanglements through love and sex, blood and money, politics and hopes, and all the other ways we become entangled. Crazy dreams played a part, as did my writing process as I work on April Showers 1921, coupling and uncoupling plot twists and character arcs.

And lo, a song did rise in my stream, a song from 1975, when I was but nineteen and serving in the military in the Philippines.

A true legend and Nobel Prize winner (the accepting of which became another facet in the complex musician’s life), here’s Bob Dylan with “Tangled Up in Blue”.

Listening to it always makes me nostalgic for what I thought was going to be.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music popped straight into the stream from memories and dreams. Here’s Rufus and Chaka Khan with a song that Stevie Wonder wrote, “Tell Me Something Good”, from the year I graduated high school, 1974.

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Monday’s Theme Music

I don’t know what dislodged in my stream last night that led this song to stream in as I sipped my coffee this morning.

“Guitar Man” was by Jerry Reed (1967). In this version, he’s playing with Glen Campbell. Both of these players have passed away, but a large sense of Jerry Reed’s personality shines through in this song. We’d call him a good ol’ boy.

I remember watching this. I would have been ’bout eleven. Guess I was an impressionable kid.

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The Truth

He repeated something that his wife had told him. “I never said that,” she said before anyone else could speak.

Indignation rose. Yes, you did, he began to say, but considered, maybe he’d heard it wrong. Maybe he was mis-remembering. Or maybe she’d said it wrong. Perhaps she didn’t remember saying it, or the people that told her had told her wrong. Or maybe she’d incorrectly remembered what she’d been told and then told him wrong, but didn’t remember it.

The only way to resolve this would be record and index everything so that he could go back and know exactly what was said. 

Yeah, right. Who had time for that?

He smiled. “Sorry. I guess I got it wrong.”

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