Tag: Bob Dylan

Saturday’s Theme Music

Earth’s shift and clear skies has sunshine booming into the main bedroom. The room is on the northeastern corner, which is to say, the rear. Stunning to wake up to such golden light again. But the shift means that other house bits are darker again. Always adjusting…

It’s Saturday, 3.18.2023. We’re mourning for our friends, who’s beloved Purdue Boilermakers, #1 seed, fell in March Madness’s first round and is eliminated.

It’s 36 degrees F outside but the weather wicca tell us that Ashlandia highs will crest 65 F today. Was mighty fine yesterday, let me tell you. Spring fully ascended in all senses. Today’s sunrise was witnessed at 7:18 AM and the last of the sun in Ashlandia will be seen at 7:21 PM.

The weather pleases the housefloofs. Both are outside harvesting rays and grooming. Tucker’s thick white ruff, like a wondrous garment, shines in the light against his black markings, but Papi’s ginger and cream, marked with orange swirls, are pretty, too.

I have “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”, by Bob Dylan, in the morning mental music stream. A dream thing, an editing and writing thing, an admonishment to self, don’t think twice, stop overthinking matters, yo. One of my worst habits. Have a whole catalogue of them. I started with the Peter, Paul, and Mary version. Then, thinking about it, I recalled Willie Nelson singing it, so I went hunting for it. Then I found a live version with Bob D. and Eric C. I decided I’d go with it, so here you are.

Stay positive. The day is full of great possibilities. Got my coffee. Time to go do some things. Stay with it. Here’s the tune. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Heavy snow fell this morning for thirty minutes. Thick mythological flakes twirled and spun, building to a fast two inches. But the temperature was 36 and the sun cracked the clouds, and lo’, it melted in minutes. Now it’s wintingery again, dashing dark clouds, determined sunshine, uncertain winds chasing leaves.

It’s Feb 26, 2023, a Sunday. Sun’s warm light surmounted the southeasterly elevations at 6:51 this morning. We’ll stay in its presence until 5:57 PM.

Winter warnings are issued. The weather nerds say snow and rain every other day this week. Highs in the 40s to 50s during the day but pushing the mercury down in the mid-twenties at night. Last night’s low was 28 F. It’s now 42, which is our high.

Interesting news from sis-in-law. One, QVC is talking about a deal with her for her product, the CranioCradle. Two, she was in a car accident and now has a bad hip and can’t walk. They’re telling her she’ll probably need surgery. Her insurance company is taking care of everything, and she has Medicare to cover other costs. Still, it’s a pain.

We were out shopping in the changing conditions. — had to – Book Club in March, you know, K is hosting, you know — apparently the President and significant royalty from around the world is showing up, to judge from the planning and preparation — and I somehow between the axis of K’s zealous planning and the changing wintingery situation ended up with The Neurons plugging “Shelter from the Storm”. Guy named Bob Dylan sung it originally. Came out on one of his albums in the 1970s.

Stay pos. The shopping expedition flushed my energy away. It’s a lot of tedious standing around for me. It was just raining, then sleet, then snow. Now it’s sunny. The wind has gone on up the road. Monday is coming.

Here’s the music. Have a magnifico Sunday. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Moderately hard winds moaned and grumbled through the neighborhood last night. Toward eleven, I was in the kitchen when I heard a noise. It sounded like the heater could be on but it was coming from the wrong direction, or that a faucet was running, but again, no faucets where the sound seemed to be. I walked around to localize the sound only to realize, it’s a hard rain drumming on the roof outside the vaulted ceiling in the great room. It’s so rare that we have heavy rain, I didn’t recognize its sound.

Wind and rain went on throughout the night. Nice to have rain but we need snow. I can’t believe that we’re at the end of 2022 and we still don’t have weather control. The mind reels with unintended consequences which we might be dealing with now if we did have it. Weather control was always one of my favorite science fiction ideas as a child, along with space travel, teleportation, exploring other planets, and ‘time travel’. We have none of that yet. Even flying cars have evaded us. I think it’s because extraterrestrials got in among us and have sabotaged our efforts because they don’t want us advancing, but that’s just me.

Doesn’t feel like winter outside, probably because there’s no snow and ice, not even any on the surrounding mountains. It’s all sunshine and blue sky today. The temperature is 48 F and the grass is as green as late spring. Our high temperature will be just three degrees higher, but still, this is December’s end in the northern lats. Where is the cold stuff of last week? To be fair, this is around our average high. Lows usually touch the lower thirties, though. We wouldn’t mind some of the cyclone bomb snow obliterating a lot of the U.S., although cyclone bomb sounds like a bath thing. If we had that weather control, maybe we could protect others and save ourselves from drought. Instead, we’re dithering with social media.

The sun’s influence arrived with a full blaze at 7:39, just two hours ago. Sun fall will begin about seven hours later from now, if I’m doing the math right, which is very iffy. I haven’t had any coffee.

Hearing that rain last night and thinking about how hard it was falling brought out a Dylan tune called “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”. The song came out in 1963 but I didn’t get familiar with it until after “Tangled Up in Blue” came out in 1975. Dylan wasn’t played much on the AM radio which I listened to in the late sixties and early seventies. It wasn’t until Tangled came out and I was stationed in the Philippines that I went searching for more Dylan and discovered his earlier stuff. I was twenty then, and became engrossed with his lyrics and style, so I bought a few album, listening to them as I painted and drew when I was off duty and not partying or exercising. I deem “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” today’s theme music. Mentioning that, the state up north and east of us is worried about this rain, because it’s going to melt the snow, opening a can of problems with flooding.

It’s Tuesday, December 27, 2022. Go have yourself a ball. I’m going to have coffee. Here’s Dylan’s somber song. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

We’re into the middle band of the rainbow of days, a prism that never ends. That’s right, it’s Wednesday. We’re also into the final seven days of August, this being the 24th, and over halfway through the memorable year of 2022.

It’s 71 F right now and we expect to be in the upper nineties by day’s end, although we’re not anticipating passing 100. Not in the cards today, fingers crossed. Air quality isn’t bad today. It’s gone up and down by the hour in the last two days as the winds ebbed and flowed. Nighthold was broken at 6:28 this morning, but the darkness will be restored after sunset at 7:58 PM. “Night is coming,” people whisper. They’re talking about the long night. Others mock them, but those who understand these things are preparing for the long night.

“Lay Lady Lay” by Bob Dylan from 1969 has won the morning mental music stream over. The Neurons allowed me to see the progression made from thought to song today. It involved some writing so I’ll not say anything else. It’s a superstition of mine. The song was a favorite of mine for a bit. It came out when I was thirteen. There was a girl in school who showed interest in me. Sweet Vicky loved this song, so when she asked me about it, I loved it, too! We held hands, went to dances, malls, and movies, necking in secret for a few months, before going toward different lights. I have good memories of her and this song.

Stay positive, test negative, and take care of yourself, family, and community. I’ve had my coffee, thanks. Feel free to have some yerself. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

It’s a friendly sun arriving on this Sunday, May 22, 2022. Opening with bright sunshine at 5:44, a dappled blaze on the backyard, she followed up with warm caresses. The cats approve. Temperatures are up to 60 F, on their way to the mid-seventies. Although clouds sprinkle the blue cup holding us in, we don’t expect precipitation. The sun will pack up its sunshine and exit stage west at 8:32 this evening.

While it’s lovely here, other parts of the country are baking. Wildfires are raging in Texas and New Mexico. Europe is bracing for a heat wave. Haven’t seen what’s going on in Australia recently but I hope they’re enjoying a stretch of comfortable and non-threatening weather.

Reading recap of shootings and deaths in the U.S. brings today’s music to the morning mental music stream. First, I think that we should have a name for shooting deaths. You know, we have ‘hangry’ now and the like. Shouldn’t a shooting death be a sheadth or something? You know, call it out from the many other ways of death? Yes, there is murder, I suppose…

Speaking of murder, haven’t heard much about the murder hornets this year. Killer bees have also been out of the news, although bird flu has jumped back into my feeds. I bring it up after reading about the monkeypox. Children who survive wild weather twists, murder hornets, killer bees, shootings, COVID-19, and monkeypox will certainly have a lot to reminisce about in their middle years. Kind of like boomers reflecting back on telephone landlines, three television channels, and having to ‘manually’ change the channel but getting up and walking over to the device. Yeah, I guess it’s not the same. Oh, we did also have the nuclear threat, though, didn’t we? And other flus, and then, later, AIDs, hijackings and skyjackings, and several more wars. Does that make us even?

How many times, I wondered about several things while perusing news. Naturally, the neurons believed that I was asking them to sing the Bob Dylan classic, “Blowin in the Wind”. Bob asked some questions in the 1962 song. 

Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

h/t to Lyrics.com

The answer to it all is blowin’ in the wind. Which, an optimist would say, means an answer is out there.

Stay positive, test negative, avoid monkeypox, etc. Coffee is here. Time to sip. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Rotating and orbiting as the planet has done for billions of years, we now come to February 2, 2022. A Wednesday, it may be memorable to many people for many reasons, but how does it compare to the past trillions of days? Our human lifespans are so short compared to the universe’s life scale that little of what we do is memorable in the cosmic sense. It’s why we narrow our focus down to our personal spaces and calendars. Contemplating the greater scale may well lead to nihilistic conclusions or heavy consumption of coffee, alcohol, or other drugs. Or eating disorders. So let’s just keep focus on our smaller but amazingly impactful days. They are impactful on us and that’s what builds our memories and experiences and skew our emotions.

Anyway, the sun ‘rose’ at 7:23 AM and will ‘set’ at 5:27 PM. I’ll drink some coffee and eat some food. I’ve already done some of the latter. You’re probably doing something similar, eating, or thinking about what you’ll eat, even considering, perhaps, who you’ll eat it with. Here in Ashland, it dropped to 28 F last night. Now it’s 36 with a high of 44 expected for the day. Dollops of congealed gray and white cloud float on the blue sky. We do not expect rain.

I haven’t done any of my daily games. They’ll come soon. I guessed my first word in Wordle in two guesses yesterday. On the other hand, it required all six in two games. Four other games took three or four. Yeah, I like Wordle. Getting it in two is luck. For instance, in the first game when I guessed it in two, the last two letters of my first guess were green. On a whim, I entered poppy as my second guess. That was the word. Yea for me.

Weirdly, I have a song called “If Not for You” living in the morning mental music stream. Bob Dylan wrote and recorded the song. Then George Harrison recorded it, followed by Olivia Newton John. I had the albums for the first two performers. I heard the ONJ version on the radio one day and then turned around and pulled out the vinyl 33-RPM album to listen to Dylan and an eight-track tape to listen to George’s version. Doing that back then in my bedroom in Pittsburgh somewhere around 1973 (all of the versions were out by 1971), I never imagined the technology that would allow me to sit at my computer and pull up the same songs. Trippy, innit? Just think of how it all might be in another fifty years or so, right?

Part of me thinks about memories like this and wonder why it stays so sharply in my memory today that I can look around that room from my vantage here and see and hear the details of my life then. A sliver of me muses that maybe there’s some cosmic entanglement taking place. Another facet of me shrugs and mumbles, who knows?

For today’s theme music, I’ve selected a recording of Dylan and Harrison playing it together. Makes me smile. Stay postive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and boosters when you can. I’m off for coffee now. Looking forward to it. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

It’s raining this weekend. I like a nice, solid rain, which is what we’ve received. Brew some coffee and chill with relaxing rain sounds. I shouldn’t be surprised that a song about rain entered the mental stream yesterday. That it was Bob Dylan and “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35″ surprised me.

I was finishing up shaving and such when I thought out of nowhere, what’s Bob Dylan’s real name? I came up with Zimmerman but took a few more seconds to remember Robert. And then the song began.

I used this song as theme music back in October, 2017. Its mocking, rambunctious nature always entertains me. The song came out in 1966. I was ten, so the song passed under my radar. But when I became aware of it a few years later, I thought, yeah, this is about getting high. After doing a paper for a pop culture class years later, I appreciated the play on words, how people are throwing stones at others for imagined slights.

Pretty appropriate for these years, in which stones are slung for every damn thing, right? Have a good one. Wear your mask. Enjoy life.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

I found myself remembering some Bob Dylan lines this morning.

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
“Rip down all hate,” I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull, I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow

[Refrain]
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

h/t to Genius.com

This song, “My Back Pages”, is by Bob Dylan. I was more familiar with the Byrds’ version which came out in 1967. It struck me as I was moving toward my teens and getting my footing in the music that moved me. I’ve always thought it was about learning and changing, which fit my evolving philosophy.

So I sought the song today, thinking it fit these times, and found this version. Featuring Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, Roger McGuinn, Neil Young, George Harrison, people I think are pretty good musicians, it’s the 1992 Bob Dylan tribute concert from 1992.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Today is Saturday, March 28, 2020, day fifteen of our self-isolation (yeah, we jumped on it early).

I realized this morning that I didn’t see anyone’s face except my wife (with exceptions via technology). This isolation and watchfulness brought an old song up into the mental music stream this morning. Part of it were lines brought up by news of people who refused to follow guidance.

All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants too
Outside, in the distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
The wind began to howl

h/t to Genius.com

Here’s the Jimi Hendrix Experience covering Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” (1968).

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

Walkin’ yesterday, post writing session (which wasn’t an overly great session), my stream introduced a Traveling Wilburys song to my mind.

The writing session had been a lethargic affair, brief spurts of reading bridged by long periods of pensive thinking. Two thirds of the way through it, I noticed that the folks on either side of me had low energy as they pursued their ‘puter biziness, yawning, sighing, stretching. So I think it was a low-key energy tide affecting me and others.

Dream speculations occupied me afterward as I thought about a new recent trend in my dreams. Then came the song, “Heading for the Light” (1988) by The Traveling Wilburys.

I enjoyed the Wilburys album. It was released while I was still stationed and living in Germany. This was before the wall fell. Five talented individuals – Harrison, Petty, Dylan, Lynne, and Orbison — with well-established careers came together to record a song. One song led to an album. One album led to two, but death — Orbison’s — curtailed further activity. Harrison and Petty have since followed him. Only two Wilburys remain.

This song, unlike most Wilburys songs, has a hugely distinctive Harrison/Lynne sound to it. Not surprising, as they were the producers. But the lyrics, a look back at where a person has been, how they changed it around, and where they’re going now, was perfect for the moment, then and now.

The song hung around in the stream, and is there today, where there’s little light permeating the soft rain clouds. That makes it a nominee for today’s theme music.

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