Day Two Zillion – Company
Thursday’s Theme Music
Lock downs, quarantine, self-distancing, isolation, and every other way you can think of saying “We’re staying inside” is still in effect in many places. Restlessness is grabbing people. They’re suffering urges to hit the road, get their nails done, go bowling, or just stroll the streets and have a drink with friends. Some of them are thinking of escape.
Which brought to mind, “Gimme Three Steps” by Lynyrd Skynyrd from 1973. Bet that’s more than a few out there, thinking, gimme three steps, and I’ll be out the door ‘fore you know it.
Here’s some music for your thoughts.
Thursday’s Theme Music
Looking out, sipping coffee, I questioned myself, seeking the day and date. Wow, the sixteenth, half of April is already gone. Thursday again, already? It seemed like we just had one. Pretty soon, it’ll be the weekend all over again.
The weekend doesn’t have much true meaning for me. Military existence as a shift worker made them moot. When I joined management, it changed, and I kind of got the hang of it, mostly due to my wife saying, “It’s the weekend. We should do something.”
Everyone seemed to have a mindset around the weekend – do something, or do nothing. Meanwhile, since dropping out of the employment world to enter the sinister world of being a novelist, I’ve drifted back out of the weekend thing. Everyday is for writing in my world, but I still clash with the rest of the world and its idea of the weekend (along with those pesky interruptions called ‘holidays’).
Weirdly, out of all this, the song by the Killers, “Human” (2008), splashed into my thought stream.
I did my best to notice
When the call came down the line
Up to the platform of surrender
I was brought but I was kind
And sometimes I get nervous
When I see an open door
Close your eyes, clear your heart
Cut the cord
h/t to Genius.com
Interesting to me but probably no one else how my mind jumps through these connections. It makes me smile.
That could be the coffee, though.
Wednesday Theme Music
I’ve done this song before, but it just fits so well to these times, when people are social-distancing and can’t go anywhere.
‘Cause I’m stuck in the middle with you
And I’m wondering what it is I should do.
It’s so hard to keep this smile from my face.
Losing control and running all over the place.
Clowns to the left of me!
Jokers to the right!
Here I am stuck in the middle with you.
It can apply to being at home with your, ahem, loved ones (or their reaction to you), or the cat’s reaction to your continual presence. Or there you are in a store, trying to maintain safe distance while you re-supply, all masked, while an idiot behind you ignores it all.
It can even be political, if you think that these are special times which require special leadership, that sadly, you perceive we might be lacking…
Here’s Stealer Wheels with “Stuck in the Middle with You”, from 1973.
Oh, the Hangover
Bit groggy this morning. The muses paid me a no-notice last night. Yeah, bit of a work out.
I’d been workin’ on something yesterday. Testing the waters, feeling the characters, hunting the story. Nothing really working, though. Interruptions, life, etc. Miss the old routine, and not very good at pivoting, it appears. Yeah, working on it, working on it.
Went to close up the doc last night, elevenish. Sat down to read what I’d written. The muses clambered in in their size fifteens, giving directions. This happened. Here’s the concepts. Story arcs. Main character. Yeah, this is good, this is fun, work with this.
Next thing I know, the numbers have moved into the next day. Twelve forty-seven has arrived. I’m cold, my ass is asleep from sitting in a chair, and my body wants to join my ass in sleep.
Good night of writing like crazy, even it it was without a walk and coffee, even if it left me feelin’ groggy this morning cuz I ended up not getting enough sleep. ‘Cause, yeah, it was twelve forty-seven, but, you know, I had to take my time saying good night to the muses.
Hope they come back today. Feel ready for more writing like crazy. Cheers
Thursday’s Theme Music Twofer
An old favorite Jethro Tull song came to mind this morning as I thought of self-isolation and the coronavirus social-distance shuffle. “Only Solitaire” is a short ‘un.
Brain-storming habit-forming battle-warning weary
winsome actor spewing spineless chilling lines —
the critics falling over to tell themselves he’s boring
and really not an awful lot of fun.
Well who the hell can he be when he’s never had V.D.,
and he doesn’t even sit on toilet seats?
Court-jesting, never-resting — he must be very cunning
to assume an air of dignity
and bless us all with his oratory prowess,
his lame-brained antics and his jumping in the air.
And every night his act’s the same
and so it must be all a game of chess he’s playing —
“But you’re wrong, Steve: you see, it’s only solitaire.”
h/t AZLyrics.com
As it’s so short, my mind jumped to a 1966 Neil Diamond song, “Solitary Man”. (BTW, Johnny Cash did an interesting cover of this song in 2000.)
The song has that pop sound of transition during those days (mid sixties). Featuring a horn section that was often used as pop went electric, becoming rock and more mainstream, the song has a sound that I associate more with adult contemporary. Interesting though, that this sound is being used by several groups now as a retro sound. Think, for example, of Portugal! the Man. WTH, I’ll include that, too. You don’t get a twofer, but a threefer.
That is all. Good day.
Michael Seidel, writer 