Tag: 1995

Monday’s Theme Music

I have an affinity for songs about rain. While some are happy songs (“Singing in the Rain”), many of them are about depression or mental illness, like “No Rain.” I like this particular song, “Only Happy When It Rains” by Garbage, because of the delivery, but also the statement it makes. This is a sad and bitter person who likes being sad and bitter. Hey, that’s so honest, and is such a mockery of so many other songs about being happy or morose, those, “Oh, what am I going to do?” songs.

It just happens that today is sunny, with hype that it’s going to be warmish and springish. There’s not a sign of rain.

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Friday’s Theme Music

I like Oasis, and found myself singing “Wonderwall” to myself this morning.

And all the roads we have to walk are winding
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding
There are many things that I would
Like to say to you
But I don’t know how

Because maybe
You’re gonna be the one that saves me
And after all
You’re my wonderwall.

Of course, I was singing it to a cat. Technically, that means I wasn’t singing it to myself. The cat seemed to like it. Of course, they were waiting to be fed.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

I dreamed last night that I was driving a convertible with the top down on an oceanside road. I was alone, and the weather was gorgeous. The road could been the stretch of Pacific Coast Highway between Big Sur and Carmel. I saw myself and the scene from different angles, like I was in a movie montage, but I don’t know what kind of car it was. No one else was seen in the dream, just me, happily driving. (Almost seems like a pretty metaphor for my writing process.) This song, “One of Us,” performed by Joan Osborn was playing on the car radio during this dream montage.

Cheers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gx1Pv02w3Q

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Recalling another anniversary (my life is full of ’em!), this one being my retirement from the U.S. Air Force in November, 1995. I was stationed at Onizuka Air Station in Sunnyvale, California. This song, “Cumbersome,” by Seven Mary Three, was a popular tune of the time. To paraphrase the lyrics, I’d enjoyed my military career and had some success, but it had become cumbersome.

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Monday’s Theme Music

A crazy dream finished my night. I’d been driving in a borrowed vehicle. It was in good shape, nothing special. Rain was falling. Traffic was dense. I was going a long distance.

We entered a wide tunnel lit with diffused dull yellow lights. More lanes were available. Veering into one, I accelerated, and caught a glimpse of a Chevy pick-up behind me. He’d apparently wanted into the space I’d taken. Now, filled with rage, he was coming up on my bumper.

Still in the tunnel, the road curved. We were going up a hill. I floored the accelerator pedal, keeping it down as engine, road noise, and speed built. Terrified by the speed, and barely in control, I was pulling away from him, and everyone else, when I rounded a corner and almost hit a van crashed on its side. There wasn’t time to stop but I managed to swerve around it. As I thought about stopping for the van and warning the other traffic, I discovered that boulders and rocks were strewn across the tunnel road past teh van. I drove around them, trying to grasp what was happening, and left the tunnel.

Rain was pouring. The day was fading. I reached my destination and pulled in, weary to the bone. It was Monday. I knew I needed to be somewhere else by Tuesday. More travel was ahead. I was with my father’s wife, and her family. Talking to others, she was planning a get-together, and I was there for it. But in flashbacks, I remembered that I’d left some things at my previous location that I needed. I grew conflicted over going back to get them – it had been such a long distance, and an exhausting drive – staying for the event being planned, or foregoing continuing on to my next location. Regarding the last point, I was attempting to understand, where was I going, and was there a need for me to go?

I awoke with this part of the song, “The World I Know,” by Collective Soul, playing in my mind:

So I walk up on high
And I step to the edge
To see my world below.
And I laugh at myself
While the tears roll down.
‘Cause it’s the world I know.
It’s the world I know.

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Today’s Theme Music

Sometimes, I heard some of the lyrics of this song and think, those are the perfect words for an organic writer.

I’m riffing off the E.L. Doctorow quotes:

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

Yes, that’s my sentiment. Sometimes wrong turns are taken. So when I hear these words from the Oasis song, “Wonderwall,” I think of the Doctorow quote:

And all the roads we have to walk are winding

And all the lights that lead us there are blinding

The song continues, “There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don’t know how.” That seems to me what writing is often about; we see the scenes and the characters, and seek to explain, but we don’t know how. That’s writing.

Here it is, from nineteen ninety-five, “Wonderwall.”

 

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Today’s Theme Music

So many questions are circulating now about last year’s presidential election in the U.S., and Russia’s role in Trump’s surprising election. Information keeps leaking out about Trump insiders lying about when they met with Russians, or if. Donald keeps insisting that it’s all fake news being leaked and then contradicts himself and vows to find and prosecute the leakers.

What’s going on? We need to find out. We might need to follow Ozzy Osbourne’s advice:

“Who can we get on this case?
“We need Perry Mason.
“Someone to put you in place.
“Calling Perry Mason.”

I remember listening to this song after retiring from the U.S. Air Force in nineteen ninety-five. We’d just moved from military housing on Moffett to a little duplex in Mountain View. The web and Internet were penetrating homes and businesses as the online potential became exposed. We were in the middle of the dot com bubble. Start-ups were abounding, and the Bay Area housing market was heating up. “Seinfeld” was the hot television show.

I was unemployed but retired while my wife worked for an advertising agency on Castro Street in Mountain View. Every open house for rentals had dozens of applicants. We managed to find one that was going to be listed. The elderly couple who owned it were cleaning it. We talked to them. They told us to come back for the showing at the scheduled time. We drove away but returned, and offered them a higher rent and deposit. They were still cleaning; we told them we’d take it as is, and finish the cleaning. They agreed. We moved ourselves with assistance from Starving Students. A month later, I began working for a medical device start-up. We lived there for four years, until we bought a house in Half Moon Bay.

Here it is, from nineteen ninety-five, Ozzy with “Perry Mason.”

 

 

 

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Today’s Theme Music

We’re streaming some Blues Traveler out of the Wayback Machine today.

The day has a retro feel to it. It feels like 1995 all over again. That wasn’t bad for me, nor great. Likewise, for the rest of the world. The US ‘had swung to the left’ again, and Bill Clinton was POTUS. He wasn’t left, but a master of the center. The voting population still remained left of him on our political spectrum. Still does today.

Back in 1995, I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do. I’d just retired, so I had my military pension. My wife was working for an ad agency but income from those two stories didn’t carry far in the Bay area. It wasn’t as bad as it is now, but the rising house and land prices were harbingers of what was to come.

Anyway, to the music.  The Blues Travelers had been around for a while but were making it onto the pop charts with ‘Run-Around’ in 1995. John Popper’s harmonica was unusual for pop music of that era. It’s a good song for putting your left foot in front of your right a few thousand times and perambulating down streets, sidewalks and trails. Singing it while walking about provides a fine feeling of freedom.

Sing it with them.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

This song, and the album it was on, blasted in on us in the summer of 1995.

I was stationed at Onizuka Air Station (a place also once called Sunnyvale Air Station and Onizuka Air Base), working as Director, QAF for the 750th Space Group. A young airman was working at his desk, radio on, as I walked by; this song was playing. I stopped down to listen, and then laughed and said, “Holy shit.” It was one of those songs that shocked me into instant memory. I listened for it on the radio as I was driving arrive the bay, and cranked it up whenever it came on.

The song starts out so gently, confessional and non-confrontational, but then it rises with unmasked, almost uncontrolled rage and contempt, a thematic approach repeated several times in the song. Listening, it feels like an emotional stream of consciousness that zigzags between confrontation, reconciliation and coping, someone trying to release their pain and bitterness even as they search for understanding.

This is Alanis Morissette with ‘You Oughta Know’ from ‘Jagged Little Pill’. 

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