Category: memories

Today’s Theme Music

It’s a springly day again. Yes, Winter still wields a razor edge wind. Circling and prowling the valley, his blade sometimes scores your cheeks and hands. The sunshine helps keep him away. Everyone believes there is one Winter but there are several. The more aggressive ones that roam the U.S. have gone East. The one remaining with us makes many threats but he’s mostly benign. Sunshine intimidates him and drives him into the shadows.

Sunday, of course, is quiet. This area, southern Oregon, is a realm of traditional American values that developed in the last century plus as trade unions successfully campaigned for having weekends off. Sunday mornings are not for working unless it’s an essential service. The list of essential services has grown, and fewer people dress and go to Church, but Sunday remains a quieter and more relaxed morning than the week’s other days.

Into that scenario, I introduce a little Led Zeppelin. From ‘Led Zeppelin II’ and 1969, it’s time once again to ‘Ramble On’, a very good walking song.

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Downstreams

Some mental activity racing along my axons today.

  • Love that first slurp of my quad shot mocha at the Boulevard. The baristas know my preferences and do a great job of blending everything and then topping my coffee drink with with a skim of dark chocolate powder. I love the contrasts of flavors in that first tasting. Sensational.
  • It’s National White Shirt Day! This day recognizes the end of a 1937 UAW strike at GM for better working conditions. I have my white tee shirt on, under my natural wool sweater.
  • I don’t recall any dreams from last night. That’s unusual. Wonder why. Sleeping period, six and a half hours, seems about normal.
  • I’ve been reading a series of articles on sleep and whether we’re evolving from being biphasic. The latest article was on Van Winkle and provided a brief summary of the last eight thousand years of sleep.
  • I realized Part I of my  science-fiction novel in progress requires some serious editing and revising. I first realized that about a week ago and tried rejecting it. My writer within was willing to overlook changing it; the resident interior editor was reluctantly accepting of it. However, the reader in residence said, “Oh, no. That needs work.” Trust the reader. After we argued a few days, the writer and editor agreed with the reader’s points. However, the writer came up with some interesting ideas to explore in parallel.
  • The editor, though, urged us all not to make any changes until it’s all done. He pointed out that Part I is the way it is because the stories and concepts were still being explored. True; I write to understand myself, to order and structure and expand my thoughts. He pointed out that since I’m still writing the other parts, I can save myself some potential work by fully completing an entire draft before making major revisions. I accept his contention and put it on hold until the first draft is completed.
  • The novel in progress is ‘Long Summer’. Science-fiction, it’s not quite a sequel but is collateral to ‘Returnee’, as it stars Brett and Castle Corporation, and continues with many of the same themes of technological alienation and isolation, and socializing with yourself via virtual beings you develop to help people cope with life as they live far longer.
  • Talking with the barista today. “Fun plans?” she asked. Because, it’s Saturday; in her working and school world has meaning that has left my writing world. I don’t segregate the days into weeks and weekends any longer. I barely notice the date. “Movies,” I answered her. “We’re going to see ‘Lion’.” She wasn’t familiar with it. I mentioned Dev Patel and a few of his movies. Yes, she remembered ‘Slumdog Millionaires’. It didn’t occur to me until later that she was eight years old when Slumdog was released.
  • That conversation pointed me onto new vectors of changes and the differences in my values, perceptions and experiences as a sexagenarian and the same in her as a young adult. It’s the same conversation I had as a young adult with those forty to fifty years older than me. I was twenty in 1976. Those who were sixty in 1976 had been born just after World War I ended. They fought in World War II and remembered the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Grandparents had been part of the American Civil War. The Soviet Union was founded during their lifetime and the Cold War dominated world politics.
  • It’s interesting to put into perspective. What I think of as ‘normal’ isn’t the same as the previous generation or the next generation. Besides when we were born forming us, so do our education levels. More strongly and interesting, we saw how where we live and our education and economic situations affect national politics during the 2016 presidential election. Now, this article on FiveThirtyEight tells about how where we live affects our deaths. It’s a telling insight to me.

Cheers

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Today’s Theme Music

When I was young, I sought better sound in my stereos.

Whether from imagination or real ability, I often detected hums and distortion that irritated me. Conducting trail and error set-ups in those pre-Internet days of the mid 1970s, I separated power wires and speaker wires and ensured I had solid connections between everything. I bought gold wires to improve the sound and kept searching for better equipment. Vinyl had the best initial sound IMO but it was a fragile state that would begin deteriorating with play. Cassettes and eight track players always introduced warble and distortion as the tapes stretched. Muddiness would creep in.

I ended up buying an open-reel system. I developed a habit of recording my vinyl on an open reel. Although a cumbersome system, open-reel maintained the best sound quality. I would record the album on open-reel for my home use and cassette for my portable use and store the vinyl to protect it. Once the cassette quality began diminishing, I would record it anew.

But while noticing the sound difference on my systems at home, I also discovered that some albums came out sounding better in the beginning. Their colors were sharper, finer and clearer. A few of those albums mesmerized me with the beauty of their sound. Some combined that with wonderful lyrics and melodies, becoming astonishing, special albums.

The first of these that struck me in such a way was Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, a now classic rock album. But it was only one album, not much of a data set. The second album that established itself as having high production values (as I learned it was called) was ‘Songs In the Key of LIfe,’ by Stevie Wonder. I don’t know much about music production, then or now, but I thought that Stevie’s album was beautiful in and of the ways I mentioned. I was stationed in the Philippines, at Clark Air Base with the 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing, when the album came out. Intent on staying active, reading and saving money, I did a lot of walking.

‘Sir Duke’, from this album, was my favorite walking-around sound for that era’s mental playback system. It’s a good theme song to bring on Friday.

(As an aside, I wince at hearing this digital version; it sounds way too tinny to me. But that’s me.)

 

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Today’s Theme Music

“This is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. We’re stealing it back.”

I was thirteen in 1969. The Tate-LaBianca murders exploded over the news. I remember newspaper headlines, photographs and television news coverage of the Manson Family actions and the subsequent investigations as clearly as I remember the assassinations of RFK, JFK and MLK, the Watts riots, or the Apollo moon landing. Helter Skelter became the symbol of the murders because the words were written in blood at the scene. The murders became books and movies under the name ‘Helter Skelter’.  It wasn’t an accident. Charles Manson believed and taught the Beatles’ ‘White Album’, including ‘Helter Kelter’, contained coded messages for him and his followers.

If you can escape the murderous connection, the lyrics are good to sing as you’re walking around:

When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
And I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
And I get to the bottom and I see you again

The song, written by Paul McCartney, would never be heard the same for many of us. Here is U2, trying to change it back for us in 1988.

 

 

 

 

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Today’s Theme Music

I enjoy stream-of-consciousness writing. This song, by Suzanne Vega, came out in 1982 but I didn’t become aware of it until the early 1990s, when I was stationed at Onizuka in Sunnyvale, California. Then, after hearing it, I kept trying to learn the name of it, and failed for a long time. People were vaguely aware of it but nobody was certain of who performed it nor its name. Eventually, the Internet came along. A successful search led me to answers: ‘Tom’s Diner’, by Suzanne Vega, and the rest.

‘Seinfeld’ was my favorite show for a long time, and remains my favorite comedy show. I liked Jerry before he was big. When his pilot was first announced, my wife told me, “That comedian you like is getting a television show.” I saw the pilot air on Armed Forces Radio and Television Services through our local channel in Germany. I enjoyed it but didn’t know what happened to it, as we didn’t get the series for a while. Eventually a few episodes of the first half year were shown. Then I returned to America and discovered it was a weekly series.

The connection between the song and the series is Tom’s Diner. Tom’s Diner was a place Vega frequently as a college student and was the setting, as Monk’s, for many ‘Seinfeld’ scenes. Learning that, I thought, This must be a great diner.

BTW, a famous actor is mentioned dying in the song. People figured out from when the song was written and various other clues that the actor was William Holden, someone she’d never heard of. Anyway, after that laborious intro, here’s the song, ‘Tom’s Dinner’. 

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A Chair

It begins with the chair. I’ve always preferred a hardback chair. We have none in our house. Sometimes I see old chairs for sale for a few dollars and think that I’ll buy one to have for this purpose.

But our dining room chairs are okay for my meditative purposes. I began meditating while stationed in the Philippines in 1976. I was very regular and disciplined about it for several years before drifting away from the practice. Sometimes, though, the urge to sit quietly in a chair in loose clothing in a silent room and followed the process comes to me. The practices are familiars and comforting. My mantra, established for me by my guru decades ago, still resonates with my core.

Meditating cleanses and focuses me, relaxes and calms me. It lets me listen better and think more clearly. It instills patience and distills my angers and frustrations while reinforcing my will and determination.

I only meditate for twenty minutes any more. Upon emerging, colors are brighter and softer, more vibrant but more separate. I see and hear more clearly. I usually meditate after making my coffee but before drinking it, as I like that smell swirling around me as my breathing deepens.

I’ll sometimes have an out-of-body moment. The first time it happened, six months into meditating, startled me, as I was suddenly looking down on myself from above. More often, my body will do small corrections, and feeling them will bounce me into conscious thoughts and out of the meditative state.

I always end by standing up and stretching. I always feel renewed. It’s not unsurprising to end a session and discover one of my cats contemplating me, just sitting and watching. I feel like the process attracts them.

Or maybe they’re coming over to see why I’m not moving, and are trying to determine if I’m still alive.

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s song came out of a 1975 Art Garfunkel album, ‘Breakaway’. My wife and I loved this album. We owned it on cassette and it was a regular road trip album.

There were a lot of road trips in those days. I had completed basic training and tech school the year before. Now, in 1975, I was assigned to my first duty assignment, HQ AFLC at Wright-Patterson AFB. My wife was still in high school in a neighboring state. I broke Air Force rules to jump into my 1968 Camaro and drive down to see her. She moved in with me, and we married in August of 1975.

‘Breakaway’ is rich with memorable songs for us. ‘The Waters of March’ is the one selected for today’s theme music. Written by Antonio Carlos Jobim about the rainstorms of Rio de Jainero in March, it’s been covered by many. Wonderful versions are out there. But I selected the Garfunkel version for its personal connection.

A mellow, meditative performance, it’s a good song to stream in your head while walking around in the rain.

 

 

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Today’s Theme Music

This song popped into my head yesterday while cleaning in the bathroom.

I don’t know why.

I rarely understand what causes the selections that stream into my iBrain for me to watch, hear and think about. It’s a bona fide mystery.

But it’s a fun tune, a bit older, of course. I know it from the movie, ‘Earth Girls Are Easy’. That was released in 1988. Let’s see, call it a romantic, science-comedy with musical overtones. It was an astonishing cast: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, Charles Rocket, Jim Carrey, Damon Wayans, with others.

This song is ‘Cause I’m A Blonde’, by Downtown Julie Brown.

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Today’s Theme Music

I was sent on a secret mission this morning. I’d tell you about it but I assume that if you’re reading this, you understand what secret means. Perhaps I’ve erred.

Naturally I needed secret mission theme music. The world abounds with such music but I dropped back to an early favorite. The TV show, ‘Secret Agent Man’ with Patrick McGoohan, played in the US in the mid 1960s. Dad was back in the country for a period then, and I remember watching the show while visiting him at my grandparents’ house.

Here it is, that 1966 hit, Johnny Rivers singing ‘Secret Agent Man’.

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Personal Windows

Friends, prompted by curious, started grilling me about some of my past life the other night. Those were my super-secret military days.

Since their questioning, I’ve drifted along currents of wonder about living amidst change and how small our windows of knowledge truly seem. Change is fast and constant. The military commands I worked in thirty years ago no longer exist; the weapons systems introduced during my career are being retired. Bases have been shuttered. They’re trying to retire the nukes I once controlled (a good thing, in my mind). God knows what’s going on in space.

I ended up in a medical start-up after my military career, first in sales operations, running customer service and spewing out reports about sales trends. We were part of a nascent business, per-cutaneous transvascular coronary angioplasty, moving into stent delivering systems for coronary applications and radiation therapy to cope with re-stenosis. After that, I moved on to another company in search of ways to cope with chronic total occlusions.

Life found me in Internet and computer security in my next phase, and then onto analytics. Whatever. I drifted through choices, jumping through windows when the opportunities arose, and was fortunate to have someone on the other side of those windows to pull me in and show me around.

The windows in our lives are always so small. They open and close so quickly. Technology accelerates the speed with which the windows open and close. For examples, consider how we now conduct war versus how it was conducted in decades and centuries past. Consider how we make, experience and enjoy music, and how we entertain ourselves. Yet, each window and moment is treated as though this is a permanent solution. Consider the plight of the coal industry, for example. They think it can be legislated back but technology and market forces have moved past them.

We, as humans, can only see and understand so far, and we argue and debate about what we see, what it means and what we need to do about it. Yet, each person’s life is defined by their personal windows. These are shaped by their culture, heritage, education, genetics and personal experiences, yes, but they’re also shaped by much larger forces. We often barely glimpse the shadow of such forces.

Sometimes – no, hell, often – I think we’re going around understanding the world backward; we believe reality shapes us, and we investigate how we shape it.

Maybe we shape reality. Maybe there is no past or future, there is only the window into Now.

Jump through it and keep on going.

 

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