Unheeding of what they thought or humans tried to do, the skunk removed the board with her powerful front legs and went back under the house. A robin changed positions, looking for a meal.
Indifferent to changing clocks, pending elections, economies, and pandemics, nature shifted gears, changing colors and striking down leaves and blooms in the northern climes, and refreshening and enlivening the landscape south of the equator.
Oblivious to watching eyes, hopes and despairs, and lies and promises, the sun rose, and the stars shone, and the moon reflected on it all.
All of nature and physics remained ignorant of the human worries and events, as though they were a drop in the bucket, a blink of an eye, or a mote floating through the firmaments, and not the end and beginning of everything.
The wind, as he thought about it, sighed, and went on.
So many songs out there, you know? So many genres, and talented musicians, artists, performers, groups. We live with an embarrassment of riches. Technology helps us get even wealthier by allowing us to find and play them almost instantaneously.
With all that’s out there, an amazing number of songs get cornered into niches and seem to disappear from consciousness. One of those songs for me is “Special” by Garbage (1998).
It’s a song that I’ve not heard on the radio in yonks. Came to me this morning as I was reading the news about undecided voters. This was after I called and wished my old man a happy eighty-eighth birthday. He’s an undecided voter.
Somehow from all those swirling thoughts, conversations, and read words came the “Special” lyrics, “Do you have an opinion? A mind of your own?” But of course, the undecided do. They just can’t seem to decide what to believe and support, it seems. I’ve read all manner of political, sociological, and psychology papers about why they’re undecided in recent weeks. Multiple reasons can be enumerated, from being stuck in echo chambers reverberating with false information, to being outraged and disenchanted about the GOP and Democratic Parties, to doubts that Biden is much of a change from Trump (in their opinion), to weariness.
That makes “Special” an apropos song for Saturday’s theme music. Here we sit, on the elections’ cusp in the U.S.A. in 2020, waiting to see what everyone thinks, and how they vote.
Have a good one, wherever you’re at, and please wear a mask. Cheers
I’m a pop child, you know? Born in ’56 in the United States in a lower middle-class household and living mostly in suburbs, I grew up as television and radio matured. When Mom cleaned house, she turned on her records and sang with them. Throughout the years, I heard her with Patsy Cline, Pat Boone, Johnny Cash and Johnny Rivers, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Chubby Checkers, Louis Armstrong, Tammy Lynette, Ray Charles, Johnny Mathis, Barbra Steisand, the Ink Spots and Four Platters, to list the ones that jump casually to mind.
Then there was big sis. Two years older than moi, she started listening to the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Dave Clark Five, Herman’s Hermits, Simon and Garfunkel, and Grand Funk Railroad. Boys, interested in this attractive young woman and usually a year or two older than her, brought more music in, like the Spencer Davis Group, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, and David Bowie.
The radio was always on in the car, and I received small transistor radios from Japan as birthday gifts. AM radio gave me some bubble gum pop like the Osmonds, the Archies, and the Jackson Five, along with Elvis Presley, Glen Campbell, Don McLean, Steppenwolf, and the Temptations. We had the Bee Gees, the Rolling Stones, and The Who. Television brought along Ricky Nelson, the Monkees, and all manner of performers via variety shows like Ed Sullivan,Hullabaloo and American Bandstand. Movies got into it. Friends introduced me to Sly and the Family Stone and Three Dog Night.
I explored on my own as I aged, discovering Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Cream, ZZ Top, Mountain, Captain Beefheart, the Moody Blues, early Electric Light Orchestra before they became ELO. More performers came onto the scene, like Elton John.
That’s just a little taste. Music was everywhere then, as it is now, always on, part of the foreground and the background, part of the scene, a topic of conversation. All of this is just on the pop and rock side. Beyond it there was country and western, soul, rhythms and blues, and the blues, and all the offshoots and variations. Beyond the United States were vast seas of music to be found in other countries and continents. Concerts gave us destination. Dancing gave us dates.
Music enriched existence. Oddly, all this came from a 1977 Paul Simon song, “Slip Slidin’ Away”. Time has fled through the year. Whether it’s because the days are less structured or because the usual placeholders of American culture have been disrupted, it seems like time has accelerated. Here it is, already more than halfway through the tenth month of the year. Just two more months and ten days to 2020 remains before we’re kissing it’s ass good-bye and saying hello to 2021.
Yet, we have an open-ended agenda at this point. COVID-19 has disrupted normalcy. The U.S. elections are due. We’re into the thirty-first named storm of the ‘hurricane season’. Climatologists are predicting wilder, more violent, and less predictable weather. With all that’s happening, water and food security for many of the world’s creatures are being jeopardized.
So, you might see why I’m thinking of “Slip Slidin’ Away” might have slipped into my thinking. Opportunities, time, and hope seem to be slip slidin’ away. Some might claim that sanity and peace are, too.
Certainly, it feels to me, probably because where I am in life, the days seem like they’re slip slidin’ away.
Here’s the song. Yeah, it’s a repeat. Used it back in August, 2018. Wear a mask please. And as they once said to the point it became nauseating, have a nice day.
Chose “Better Man” by Pearl Jam (1994) as today’s theme music. While it’s focused on a woman’s predicament, the song is all about rationalizing decisions and choices. As we approach election day, what better song to summarize the challenge? Many who voted for Trump in 2016 because they couldn’t support Hillary Clinton for POTUS. That most of the reasons that she couldn’t be trusted were outright bullshit, they went with the flow.
Four years later, lot of them seriously claim they still support Trump. That’s why “Better Man” is dedicated to them.
Musically, I’m living in the past. Not surprising, is it? The music from the past is more connected to me. I used it to celebrate, grieve, love, and learn.
I was also inundated by it in the past. I commuted everyday and took long road trips by car. Although listening to talk radio, sports, and books on tape competed for my attention, many hours were devoted to pop music, including rock.
I don’t commute much any more. COVID-19 has truncated my traveling opportunities. So, I’m less exposed to new music via radio. I could turn it on in the house, but I generally maintain silence through the day. I’m writing and reading, and not interested in distractions. Which is what all those things were on long drives and morning commutes: distractions from the tedium.
Anyway, this morning found me channeling the 1976 Doobie Brothers song, “Taking It to the Streets”. This is a response to the presidential debates last night. “Oh, you. Telling me the things you’re going to do for me. I’m not blind and don’t like what I think I see.”
I always like videos of live shows, when I can, so I’m sharing a 1982 video of their farewell tour. The band’s energy can often be vicariously experienced, and it makes me smile to see them all young and vibrant once again, you know?
Today’s song came out in 1994. IBM had just purchased the company who employed me; that company had purchased the start-up that I’d been working for. So my employment record was like Russian dolls (which originated in Japan, BTW).
We were living in Half Moon Bay, CA, and had a comfortable life. But I had an uncomfortable feeling it was going in the wrong direction. We started making plans about where we could move. Texas? North Carolina? Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Mexico, Washington…we roamed the net, searching for answers.
I’d just sold a few short stories, so I as feeling good about that. This song came out. Catching me by surprise on the radio, the repeated chorus, “What you waiting for”, seemed expressed directly at me. I listened to see who it was, but the radio didn’t say.
I hunted it down on the net, learning it was Gwen Stefani, “What You Waiting For?” Later, I read that she’d written the song in response to having writer’s block. That resonated with me.
All of that is background. Today, it was about the cats. Our air is at 52. Don’t even smell smoke any more (which reminds me, check on the fires up north and down south). The cats had been released when we hit moderate on the AQI scale, much to their joy. Today, I had the door open to let in Tucker.
He paused to sniff the air before entering, then sat down. Looking up, he intently regarded me. To which I said (yeah, you know), “What you waiting for?”
It’s a good song for today. What are you waiting for? November? Clean skies and better weather? An end to the pandemic? A sign of God.
I’m a terrible fortune teller. See too many possibilities. They’re all happening, none of it is happening, and all the varieties between them are happening. Such is life when the film between realities tear and shrink.
Well, that’s how it feels, sometimes.
Here in the U.S., we’re approaching an election. “It’s yuuuge,” some might claim. The possibilities, fears, and anxieties proliferating cause rolling responses: “Oh. my,” “Oh. no,” “What the fuck,” and “Here we go.”
Third Eye Blind presented us with the perfect song for now. They did it back in 1997. “How’s It Going to Be” has a softly tinged nostalgia, illuminating the questions we all experience. “How’s It Going to Be after x,” becomes an urgent plea before falling to soft, wondering surrender.
Perfect for this special year of pandemic, climate change, shifting alliances, and elections we have numbered, 2020.
2020 certainly feels like a new age. Divisions in the U.S. make us wonder what’ll happen after November’s elections. As people shun wearing masks and distancing, in part because POTUS 45 doesn’t mask and weakly endorses the CDC guidelines, signs are growing that the COVID-19 pandemic is going to be here for a while.
Michael Seidel, writer 