A good one out of the eighties, a reflection that, no matter what happens or who you appear to be, you have a core of who you are. In this case, Sting is the “King of Pain”, part of the new wave rock movement. I don’t know why, but this was the song streaming in me this morning as my cat curled up on my pillow and purred against my head.
Saturday’s Theme Music
My cats were singing this to me last night and this morning. Okay, it may have only seemed like they were singing (or humming, or purring) it because everywhere I went, and everything I did, they were watching me.
Here are The Police with Sting’s composition, “Every Breath You Take.”
Saturday’s Theme Music
From out of the dreams came some streams, and from the streams came some songs….
This one grew more forcefully shaped and remembered as the lyrics echoed through memories’ canyons and flew over plains of time.
I…I will begin again
I…I will begin again
Sometimes, when events took me down, I took strength from music, and lyrics like these. I take strength wherever, however I find it, as it seems like life drains my strength so quickly. It’s good to remember that at the rate that our bodies replace our cells, we’re always being reborn.
From 1983, U2 with “New Year’s Day.”
Saturday’s Theme Music
My wife and I were driving home when John Mellencamp’s “Authority Song” played on the radio. We knew the song and sang along. It’s from his Uh-huh album. It came out in 1983, when he was John Cougar. We saw him perform a few years later, in Germany.
As the song wound toward its end, my wife said, “This song doesn’t have many words to it, does it?” No, but that’s how a lot of pop songs are, to me. I was thinking more about these lines:
“I said, “Growing up leads to growing old and then to dying
“And dying to me don’t sound like all that much fun.”
The idea that death is bad — or not fun — has been weaponized, something to use keep us in check. “You might get hurt if you do that. You might even die.” Yes, as if we’re all living forever on this world, in these bodies.
I thought, Heaven as a concept must have been invented to comfort people who are dying or has lost someone. I always liked that idea of Heaven, that another place is beyond death where we live on. Maybe it’s like living in this sense in that mythical next existence, but suppose it’s not? Yet, we’re coached and socialized to fear death because this is life.
Come on, we’re all going to die. Life might be a spectrum, and this slice of life is just another frequency band. Thank of how wonderful it could be in the next band.
Thursday’s Theme Music
Streaming from Australia, again, and Men at Work, again. This one came out on their second album, in 1983. The streaming in my head was triggered by a cat. I’d been asleep. They wanted out. Guess what happened? Yeah. The cat’s will be done.
Returning to bed, I started writing in my head. Writing in my head is great for my writing, but not especially helpful for sleeping. I managed to throttle back the words and divert myself with lessor matters. But I then sang, “I can’t get to sleep,” and “Overkill” streamed into my thoughts. That prompted memories of hearing the song while living on Okinawa, Japan, and the friends of the time, Mike and Lori, and Jeff, and my command post peers at the 603rd MASS. After spinning the memory Rolodex for fifteen minutes, sleep was achieved.
Here it is, “Overkill.”
Tuesday’s Theme Music
“Eddie and The Cruisers” was a pretty strange movie. I enjoyed most of it, and watched it to the end. In fact, it was the end that I found the strangest aspect. But I liked the cast, and enjoyed the song, “On the Dark Side,” performed by John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band. It has a lot of that Jersey sound, and I remember that’s what some parts of the movie was about. That’s what I’m streaming today. For fun, I have the actual band and their video, and the scene from the movie. Hope you listen and enjoy them.
Tuesday’s Theme Music
It feels like an eighties kind of day. I should clarify that it feels like a day from the nineteen eighties, vice another eighties, like twenty-one eighties, or seventeen eighties. The clarification is needed to reduce confusion that older people or time-travelers might have.
If you didn’t live in the nineteen eighties, you probably don’t know what I mean. Having lived in that period, I’m not certain what I mean. I’m assuming that I lived during the nineteen eighties. I have memories of the period and events. But, for all I know, I could be an unknowing time-traveler. I also could be suffering from a disease whereas I think I’m someone who lived in the nineteen eighties, or a robot, or alien, unaware that I’m a robot or alien. I could be a fiction character, writing about that time to make a point to others, or entertain them. Or, I could be living in a virtual reality where the matters of nineteen eighty that I remember are all fake, to make me think that I’m alive. Who knows, right? We assume we do, and cling to that, because it’s safer and more comfortable than alternatives, and as far as we know, it’s true.
So, here’s “It’s Like That,” by Run-D.M.C. It’s a song that I think I heard when I thought I was living in the nineteen eighties.
On Earth, BTW. Just to clarify.
Sunday’s Theme Music
Sometimes it just sledgehammers into me: I don’t care anymore.
The hammer swings into me out of weariness, bitterness, and lethargy. I think it’s always swinging into me, but most days, or some part of the day, I can raise my shields and ward off the blows. But then I reach that point where the drums begin from Phil Collins’ song, and I’m singing with it, “I don’t care anymore.” Singing that song releases my negative energy and girds me to begin again.
Friday’s Theme Music Re-do
This song, “Lawyers in Love,” by Jackson Browne, popped into my head while I was showering, so I’m pushing it out to you.
The song came out in nineteen eighty-three. Stationed at Shaw AFB in South Carolina, I’d gone to Myrtle Beach AFB for thirty days to fill a manning assistance request, turned around and went to Korea for forty-five days on the annual Team Spirit exercise, and then went to Tyndall AFB in Florida for the Command NCO Academy. That covered January through April.
This song came out during my first days at the NCO Academy. The lyrics stuck to me. I walked around singing them, driving others crazy.
But what fun, satirical lyrics:
I can’t keep up with what’s been going on
I think my heart must just be slowing down
Among the human beings in their designer jeans
Am I the only one who hears the screams
And the strangled cries of lawyers in love
God sends his spaceships to America, the beautiful
They land at six o’clock and there we are, the dutiful
Eating from TV trays, tuned into to Happy Days
Waiting for World War III while Jesus slaves
To the mating calls of lawyers in love
Last night I watched the news from Washington, the capitol
The Russians escaped while we weren’t watching them, like Russians will
Now we’ve got all this room, we’ve even got the moon
And I hear the U.S.S.R. will be open soon
As vacation land for lawyers in love
h/t to azlyrics.com
Listen for yourself.
Monday’s Theme Music
Rising out of nineteen eighty-three came a mocking, damning tirade on behalf of the common person just coping with their chains of fucking moments. Called “Synchronicity II,” created, performed, and released by The Police, the song has a hard-edge beat to buttress bitter lyrics. Take these lines:
and every single meeting with his so-called superior
Is a humiliating kick in the crotch.
Few are the people of whatever gender, race, country, and vocation that haven’t sat in a meeting and thought, “These people are my superiors? My superior what? All they are is a superior pain in the ass.”
Can’t identify? How about,
Daddy grips the wheel and stares alone into the distance,
He knows that something somewhere has to break.
That’s how it feels: something somewhere has to break. If you listen, you can hear the deep groans of the wrenching cracks in the world. They’re just not yet visible. Or maybe I hear them in my head.
Michael Seidel, writer 