I heard this song on Sirius XM this morning. It didn’t suit my mood so I switched to FM. For a moment, I thought the radio wasn’t working because the same song was playing, in almost the same point of the song. I switched to another FM station.
Guess what song was playing?
I thought, that song must be destined to be today’s theme music. Not sure why. It’s all about relationships. Of course, it might be heard on three stations at the same time because it’s a popular song, and we end up being saturated with its playing.
Listen to some Post Malone and “Better Now” (2018).
Today’s song, “Nowhere Man,” by the Beatles, came out in 1965. I vividly remember carrying a small transistor radio (with a nine volt battery) and listening to this song early one summer afternoon, singing along with it as I walked along Laketon Road in Wilkinsburg, Pa. The lyrics were simple but seemed powerful to me.
It must have been in 1966, and I was ten when I was doing that. Fifty-two years later, I’m walking along A Street in Ashland, Or., singing it to myself in an early late summer morning. It still seems like simple but powerful song.
I’ve been coping with my muse(s) for years. I’m not certain how many I have. I may have one muse with shape-shifting skills and multiple personalities, or a horde with very distinct skill sets and ideas. I suspect my muses are both of these ideas.
Muse(s) can be fickle. Having employed some mechanisms that helped me get along with my muse(s), I thought I’d compile some brief, general guidelines. These are recorded to help me in the future, but since I’m typing them up, I thought sharing them might help others when they’re dealing with their muse(s).
Shelter your muse(s) like kittens, puppies, kits, and fledglings. They’re cute, tender, and impressionable, and need to be fed, protected, and nurtured. They depend on you for everything.
It helps to act like you’re handling a fourteenth-century Ming dynasty vase when you’re conversing with your muse(s). They’re rare, fragile, and irreplaceable.
Regard your muse(s) like they’re famous geniuses such as William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Stephen Hawking, Jackson Pollock, Maya Angelou, or Frank Lloyd Wright. They have a lot to offer, and you should pay attention.
Behave with your muse(s) as you would with family that you enjoy having around, and respect and interact with your muse(s) as you do with family that you must love because they’re family, but you have no idea why they do the things that they do.
Follow your muse(s) like they’re a famous performer, like Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Mick Jagger, Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Beyonce, or Kanye West, or a movie star like Jimmy Stewart, Sir Lawrence Olivier, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Dwight Johnson, Jerry Lewis, Casey Affleck, or Bruce Campbell.
Care for your muse(s) like a favorite elderly pet who seems to be fading.
Obey your muse(s) like you’re a child and they’re your parent(s).
Nurture, protect, and teach your muse(s) like you’re their parent(s) and they’re your child, perhaps a two-year-old, or a sixteen-year-old. They could be both from moment to moment. Part of the fun is understanding which one they are.
Interact with your muse(s) like they’ve been convicted of being a serial killer who escaped from prison and is standing in your bedroom.
React to your muse(s) like they’re the monsters under your bed. You’re not sure if they’re real, but you keep hearing noises, and it’s really, really dark.
Embrace your muse(s) like a bolt of lightning during a thunderstorm. It can be painful and illuminating, but rewarding, if you survive.
Finally, have fun with your muse(s). Pretend that you’re all celebrating graduating high-school and becoming an adult by getting drunk.
Employing these simple strategies have rewarded me with the same sort of wonderful relationship that I have with a stranger that I bump into at a parade. With a little observation and effort, you can have the same kind of relationship.
As the smoke smeared the sky, its influences skewed my streams. I found myself mumbling the lyrics to The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” (2002) as I trudged along and damned the smoke and fires.
It’s the second verse that I mumbled sang:
Don’t wanna hear about it
Every single one’s got a story to tell
Everyone knows about it
From the Queen of England to the hounds of hell
And if I catch it comin’ back my way
I’m gonna serve it to you
And that ain’t what you want to hear
But that’s what I’ll do
I was prompted by thinking, what’s the point of complaining about this? Nations and civilizations emerge and crash in a cycle as big as an ice age. Within the cycles are stories of desperation, struggle, hope and survival. Many stories are far worse than mine, and often hidden from view. Hence, I mumble sang, “Don’t wanna hear about it. Every sing one’s got a story to tell.”
A cat’s activities brought me awake. As I tended him and then used the restroom, this song was streaming through my thoughts:
“Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we’d hear it from the people of the town, they’d call us, gypsies, tramps, and thieves, but every night, the men would come around, and lay their money down.”
I don’t know why I was streaming Cher’s 1971 hit, “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves”. I was dreaming, and I remember the dreams. There wasn’t a sound track, just conversations.
Was it something that the cat did? Don’t know. It sure doesn’t seem like dream music.
This song’s release and popularity in 1975 began changing my thinking. While I’d always tried to see others’ point of view, I often failed, and slipped easily into the comfort of being me, sure of what was going on, and surer about how others live. I had some inklings that all was not as I thought from newscasts about riots, war, politics, and social upheaval, and I knew from friends, movies, and reading that lives often appear to be fine on the outside but it was rank darkness behind the scenes.
Then came this Janis Ian song, “At Seventeen”. As a boy, I thought the girls had all of the breaks. They controlled it all. We boys were the ones struggling with social graces and talking to girls. I didn’t know what it meant to a girl to meet a boy who seemed to like who and said he would call her, and then didn’t. I didn’t know what it meant for her to watch others being chosen, or how difficult it was, coping with body changes, and struggling with social perceptions and self-perception.
Life is usually more nuanced, layered, and complicated than many realize. We think everyone is the same, that all words mean the same, that every action carries the same weight. That these things aren’t true are lessons I keep learning and forgetting.
It’s September. What are you doing, surfing the net? Aren’t you a writer? Then shouldn’t you be writing something, editing, or some other activity associated with your writing dream?
Come on, get busy. “No Excuses”. 1994. Alice In Chains.
Aretha Franklin’s death and the service held to honor her reminded me that I grew up in a privileged time and place. Pop, rock, soul, R&B, punk, psychedelic, rockabilly…these were just a few of the emerging sub-genres of music developing. Reaching audiences like me were aided by advances in the recording, duplicating, and broadcasting media. As people, we were forced in earlier eras to travel to bars, clubs, and other venues to enjoy performers’ offerings. Radio and television changed that, and the Internet has expanded that ability.
I was lucky. I had radios and television, food, a roof, decent schools, and relatively stable home life. I was lucky, too, because great producers, musicians, and entrepreneurs were bringing us the sounds. And I was lucky because there were people and groups like the Stones, the Who, the Supremes, CCR, Led, Santana, Aretha, Elvis, Stevie Wonder, the Jacksons and Osmonds, Eric Clapton, John Mayall…what a list could be made. But that’s what wikipedia is about.
I have my favorites. Guitar heroes and keyboard masters remain my weakness, but great voices and song-writers always turn my head, too. Or, give me a beat…yeah, you know.
Thinking of all that, and the riotous eternal summer that was my youth, I remembered Diana Ross & The Supremes. The catalog of their songs is stupendous, and their hits are cherished as classics of an era and the Motown Sound. Was it the end of the innocence, the beginning of the awakening, or the age of Aquarius?
Here is “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, written by Ashford and Simpson, and recorded by many, but the cover streaming to me today is the one by “Diana Ross and the Supremes”. It’s powerful stuff to stream.
I associate many things with my childhood, especially matters of pop culture. TV was just breaking big in the 1960s in America, as was pop and rock music, and all their variations, on AM radio. As an child who was four when the sixties began, I was swept along. I didn’t choose much of the music I heard. It was everywhere from transistor radios that people carried to car radios to television. Some of the music isn’t to my adult tastes, but they’re part of my cultural DNA.
Today’s song, “Never My Love” by the Association from 1967, is one of those songs.
I’m familiar with Atlanta Rhythm Section (ARS) but they never grabbed me. They were too mellow for my taste. I heard a lot of their music, though, first through the radio, and then, through a friend. ARS was one of his favorite bands. I believed that was because he was from Alabama, with stops in Georgia. Although he was a Crimson Tide fan, he rooted for the Atlanta Falcons and Braves. What was odd (to me) is that his other two favorite bands were Boston and Van Halen. Van Halen ruled as number one, with Boston slotted in as his number two favorite. He never specified whether he was a David Lee or Sammy fan, but I think he leaned toward the latter because he was a Red Rocker fan when Sammy was a solo artist, but not much of a Montrose fan. Still, with those two as his top two choices, it always seemed a little odd that he enjoyed ARS, and also The Little River band.
Whatever. Today, for some reason, I’m streaming “Imaginary Lover” by ARS, from 1978.
