“Come as You Are” always spoke to a oneness for me. Friend, enemy, memory? These matters become fused, and speaks to trust and messy agendas. “Why are you urging me to come there? What are you up to?”
I’m in the midst of a rebellion this morning. It began when my mind shouted, “No more news! Just back away for a little bit. Please do it. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Carefully, I backed away from my mind, eyeing it as I did, trying to gauge its temperament. “Is everything okay?” An innocuous question, I thought.
Too innocuous. “Is everything okay?” My mind launched into a rant that went in every direction at once. I let it rant, biding my time, until the rant petered out for lack of oxygen.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. No Facebook for a bit.”
“For the day!”
“Fine, fine, and no news? Really? You want to — “
“Stop.” My mind’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t try to guilt me, dude. I won’t have it.”
“I’m not trying to guilt you.”
My mind scoffed. “Sure. Who do you think you’re talking to? Your asshole? I’m your mind, baby. I know you better than you know me.”
I’ve been in these situations before. Time and space were demanded, needed. I would accommodate my mind. “Okay, then. What sort of theme song should I use today?”
My mind glowered for moments. Dark emotions flit over its face. Suddenly, like sunshine had burst through, he brightened. “Spin Doctors. “Little Miss Miss”, 1992.”
“Really?” I remembered when it came out. I was stationed at Onizuka AFB, then called an Air Station, in Sunnyv —
“Stop.”
“What?”
“No trips down memory lane. I don’t want to do any of that bullshit today. Just play the song and write the post.”
I nodded. “Okay, chum, you got it.”
My mind faked a gag. “Don’t call me chum.”
And that’s how today’s theme music selection was made.
Pearl Jam broke into the morning’s mental music stream (M3S, patent pending) with “Even Flow” (1992), a song about a homeless man. It’s one of the songs that was on my commuting play tape when I was stationed at Onizuka and living in the SF-SJ Bay Area.
The lyrics that started my stream aren’t at the beginning, but the first refrain.
Even flow, thoughts arrive like butterflies
Oh, he don’t know, so he chases them away
Someday yet, he’ll begin his life again
Life again, life again…
Kneelin’, looking through the paper though he doesn’t know to read, ooh yeah
Oh, prayin’, now to something that has never showed him anything
Oh, feelin’, understands the weather of the winters on its way
Oh, ceilings, few and far between all the legal halls of shame, yeah
“Creep” by Radiohead (1992) has flooded my stream this morning. Its presence was prompted by the query, “What the hell am I doing here?” when I paused in the kitchen, lost in what I was about to do. I then went through the mental checklist (fed the cats, let them out, let them in, fed them again, peed — oh, yeah, coffee.)
Many people dislike “Creep”, thinking it depressing. It is depressing. But I think its chorus captures what too many people sometimes experience:
I have felt like these words from time to time (yes, alcohol was involved) but it’s been a long while for me. Hope it’s been a long while for you, too, or better, that you’ve never endured that stream of thought.
I was standing in my grass in my bare feet, breathing the morning air, looking around and remembering my dream. A shaft of sunshine found me, or I found it. I called the cat, Meep, aka the Ginger Prince, ‘real name’ Papi, and he came up and over the fence, flying at me with heroic music. I was thinking about change still, so some of the lyrics to “Change” by Blind Melon (1992) chugged into the stream.
And when you feel life ain’t worth living
You’ve got to stand up, and take a look around
And you look up, way to the sky
And when your deepest thoughts are broken
Keep on dreamin’, boy
‘Cause when you stop dreamin’, it’s time to die
I remembered the words well enough but like copying and pasting lyrics sites like Genius.com to get them correct. I continue dreaming in the nocturnal sense and the hopeful sense of pursuing goals. I’m always looking at the sky.
I don’t have any broken dreams, just dreams refined and postponed. I feel that I should note that Shannon Hoon, who wrote and sang “Change” passed away from a drug overdose when he was 28, just as they found greater success. The song was released well before his death, but I listen to it differently after he died.
The sadness of aging is often not what happens to you but the losses of others, from friends who age and disease, to our heroes.
I, and my generation, has seen a lot of our heroes passing away. The inevitability of death can’t be denied. It happens, but we don’t know what goes on past the door. There’s a lot of guesses and conjecture, and some promises and prophecies, but most of us need to wait until we go through the doorway before we find anything, if there is even anything there.
These reflections came as I thought about my dreams last night. I didn’t remember much except one. As I went through the exercise, though, the first lines of the Cranberries’ “Dreams” (1992) entered the head stream.
Oh, my life is changing everyday
In every possible way
And oh, my dreams, it’s never quite as it seems
Never quite as it seems
Those lines reflect my life philosophy. Nothing is what it ever fully seems. We live on spectrums of seeing, remembering, sometimes understanding with a glint of blinding insight, but more often, applying hopeful explanations to what we don’t know, all in efforts to uphold and sustain this stubborn illusion of reality. But then, hearing Dolores O’Riordan’s unique voice in my head, I remembered that she’d passed on, slipping through the next doorway when she was forty-six. She’d drowned in a bathtub. Reading about it now on Wikipedia, I learn her blood-alcohol level was .33. Empty alcohol bottles were found in her room.
So, in memory of dreams and life, here’s today’s theme music.
Here’s an explosion from the past. One thousand musicians assembled and played Rage Against the Machine’s song, “Killing in the Name” (1992) in Frankfurt. Pretty damn good time for such a song. Repeat after me, “Now do as they told ya. Now do as they told ya.”
Hah. Now the outre:
“Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me.”
Repeat.
Louder.
LOUDER.
Rage against what’s going on and how the world is twisting. Stop the killing in the name. Insert whatever conclusion you want for the name – hate, nationalism, religion, money… There’s quite a list of absurd reasons for why people kill for you to select from.
Always enjoyed this song, “Yellow Ledbetter” by Pearl Jam (1992). I often played it in my car during my ’90s Bay Area commutes, cranking it up and singing along even though I had no idea what Eddie Vedder was singing. I’d just make up my own lyrics for the most part because I enjoyed his range’s slide from sounding wistful, drifting toward anger, and almost sighing with resignation. Later, the net provided me with the lyrics but I keep singing free form whenever I hear this song, just going with the flow, you know.
The guitar playing on it, though, is what moved me most about this song. Never played the air guitar to it during my commutes because I imagined what looks I’d get from my fellow drivers.
