Tag: folk

Monday’s Theme Music

A riddle to begin: what is always new, different, and the same? Here we are now — Monday again. New day, different day, same day.

Yes, it’s Monday, October 4, 2021 — ten four. Do you understand? A soft-spoken, lethargic sunrise came into my life this AM at 7:10. Sun flight, where we spin away again, will come at 6:58 PM. AQI is one again — fresh air. Temperature is now 56 F but monsieur is expecting something in the upper seventies range, perhaps. Once again, it’s a pale, mottled sky, white with faint gray dimples and dips. What’s it portend? The weather gods might know.

An excellent walk was had yesterday. 77 F when I set out. Full sunshine that hills and trees blocked out quickly as I went upslope, temperatures dipping four, five degrees. Sometimes a light wind visited as I passed digesting deer, pondering cats, busy squirrels and birds, and dog-walkers with their animals. Four miles was done. Finished as the sun stood up and declared with a yawn and a stretch, “Well, I’m calling it a day.”

“Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (1969) by Crosby, Stills, and Nash, inhabits the morning’s mental music stream. The song has always captivated me. Guitar variations; the lyrics, pitches, harmony, tempo changes, its personal nature as an attempt by the songwriter, Stephen Stills, to capture and explain what he’s feeling. Here’s a live version; a little rougher than the studio-produced gem, but honest. Plus, I always like seeing performers as they looked when they made their music.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vax & booster. Enjoy your Monday and October. Coffee time. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Wonderful fall day here today. Harvest moon last night. Clear sky to view it. Enjoying it all.

The weather systems have delivered gusting winds, clear skies, and a sweet balminess to Tuesday’s air. Today is September 21, 2021. We have reached autumn. Survived the year, mostly thanks to many others. Service people, yes, but I also owe some thanks to politicians, newspaper writers, novelists, librarians, farmers, police officers, firefighters, doctors, nurses, teachers, family, friends, beer brewers, bakers, chefs, truck drivers, pilots, transportation specialists, television engineers, producers, and personalities. It’s a long list of those keeping us safe and fed, managing our water, delivering things, and distracting, entertaining, and educating.

Today’s sunrise was at 6:57 AM in the valley. Sunset will come at 7:10 PM. Air quality is a delightful 4. Our high temperature today will be in the mid to upper eighties. Think 87 F. Current temperature is 73.

After another bevy of bodacious dreams, I find a 1978 Al Stewart song called “Time Passages” populating the morning mental music stream. These lyrics (with accompanying instruments) were on loop:

I felt the beat of my mind go
Drifting into time passages
Years go falling in the fading light
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

h/t to Songfacts.com

Can you go home again? I’ve gone ‘home’ to why Mom and Dad each separately live with their new partners, so I’m thinking, no. Not physically. In many ways, going home is a brief spiritual journey of nostalgia about what was when. In that sense, yes, going home is often a mind trip away. Going home to either of those places — where Dad/Mom live — highlights the changes between now and back then. Mom and Dad left each other and then I left them and roamed the world. Didn’t see enough, to be sure, but I came to grasp that home is a state of mind.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax. Here’s the music, a mellow folk rock offering for a mellow day. Enjoy. Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

Welcome to another May Monday, the tenth day of May, the one hundred thirtieth day of 2021. Sol marched into the sky at 5:55 AM and is staying until 8:20 PM. Our southern Oregon classic spring continues with cool, refreshing blue-sky mornings, clouds coming in later in the day, and a high in the low seventies. A mild wind mixes things up.

On a personal note, my kidney stone passed yesterday afternoon. A small brown pebble, I have named it Gerald. Although it talks and laughs much, it rarely moves.

Outside at midnight last night (actually stepping out after opening the door for two cats to return), I checked out the midnight sky and remembered CCR’s cover of “Midnight Special” from 1969.

Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me
Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me
Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me
Let the Midnight Special shine a everlovin’ light on me.

The original song was traditional folk song, and the light is thought to reference a train light coming into a jail cell. No trains were passing by when I heard the song in my head last night. Only starshine and houselights.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get that vax.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music choice emerged reflections on my dream. Written by Paul Simon over fifty years ago, it was used in a movie, The Graduate, as well as standing as a hit on its own. It came about in my stream today because of the reference to a baseball player, Joe DiMaggio.

From 1968, Simon & Garfunkel with “Mrs. Robinson”. Fascinating to listen to the lyrics again.

“We’d like to know a little bit about you for our files.

“We’d like to help you learn to help yourself.

“Look around and all you see are sympathetic eyes.

“Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home.”

 

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

A mellow tune for today, one that I thought of while looking at the mountains across the way. Cold and clear, we were in the shadows on a mountain on the northern side. Over on the southern mountains, sunshine looked warm and inviting. It seemed like two worlds.

I wondered what could bring those worlds together, knowing that those “two worlds” that I saw were one, divided by who was in the shadow. It seemed a proper metaphor for life. People live in the shadow of the information and myths – and sometimes, disinformation and lies – that dominate our world. Amazing how the shadows can affect it.

From that came thoughts of songs about people coming together. There’s a bunch of them that were made in the 1960s, a time when trying to come together seemed important to many artists. Out of the pool, “Get Together” by the Youngbloods (1967) rose to the top and took over the stream.

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

Thinking about novel writing brought song lyrics into my stream yesterday:

We always did feel the same, we just saw it from a different point of view.

That summarizes much of my writing approach. I’m a fan of the unreliable narrator. Most people are unreliable narrators of their lives and stories, blinded by perceptions that weren’t there, changing what they said they saw and felt later, revising their approaches and feelings. I enjoy juxtaposing the clash of facts and memories, and letting emotions spill over.

The song line is from Bob Dylan’s 1975 song, “Tangled Up in Blue”. I’ve always enjoyed the sort of abstract, complex and yet surprisingly simple sentiments and reflections the song delivers through its point of view. So human.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

I’d been blue last week, you know, a few days of WTF and WTH coursing through me as I read news, experienced disappointment and weariness, took a jaunt down what’s-the-point lane, and pouted a bit in the pity-poor-me cul-de-sac. Yeah, a helluva neighborhood. Other streets include, who-cares boulevard and nobody-gives-a-damn avenue. We share drinks at the I’m-tired-of-this-shit cafe.

Some blues music periodically trickled through the street. Eventually, a song that was released in 1965, when I was nine, gained momentum in the stream. That would be Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. I listened to covers from Red Hot Chili Peppers, Harry Nilsson, and others, good work all, but the original’s rhythm and tone carried me most.

So here it be, from me to thee, courtesy of technology and Youtube. Gotta admit, watching young Bob and his signs puts a smile on my face.

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The Weight Around the World

I enjoy these Playing for Change/Song Around the World, and I’m fond of “The Weight” by the Band (1968), so I had to share this puppy. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Hope you stay and listen to the next song on the playlist, “Higher Ground” (Stevie Wonder, 1973), a Song Aound the World from 2011.

Very cool. Puts a smile on my face.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Planning a trip home, to see Mom in PA. I guess as part of that, Harry Chapin’s 1974 song, “Cat’s in the Cradle” started playing. Perhaps it’s because I’m not planning to see Dad, and I feel guilty. Mom and Dad each have birthdays in October’s last week. Mom lives in PA, Dad lives in TX, and I live in Oregon. Arranging to see them is a challenge with flight schedules.

The song came out the week that I entered the Air Force, as my Dad had done decades before. During basic, we heard little music and saw little of the outside world until basic was finished. Naturally, hearing this song after my basic was completed struck me as completely, and sadly, true.

Anyone, “Cat’s in the Cradle” is in my stream, so I’m presenting it to you.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Watching the gorgeous ocean today, different songs about seas, oceans, water, and sailors sprang into the mental stream. Anchoring in was a later John Denver song about Jacque Cousteau and his ship, the Calypso, from 1975.

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