Tag: optimism

Friday’s Theme Music

Ready to shake up the days? Most are, when it comes to Friday. People rush from work and school with shouts of “Freedom” and “At last!” Not necessarily because they hate those things. No, they’re just looking for some change. A little wiggle from routines.

Today is Friday, September 24, 2021. Don’t know about you, but our area is enduring splendid weather. Cool nights — upper fifties, low sixties — days warming to the upper seventies, lower eighties, and air so clear you can see tomorrow. Sun came spilling in with lazy insouciance at 7:00 AM. Our world area turns away from it at 7:05 PM. Almost to that point of equilibrium. That momentary balance.

I’m inclined toward a Natalie Cole song from 1975 called “This Will Be” today. Started with me thinking, this will be. This will be a good day. Not a proclamation so much as a feeling, a realization. Ever get that? Just like a lick of lightning to your brain — this will be a good day. I’ve had the opposite, too. Either feeling gives me a chance to prepare to walk the tightrope, know what I mean?

The song entered the morning’s mental music stream through the outre, “from now on”. Rightly, the song is a brassy R&B love song that starts soft and becomes belted out with optimistic energy. Just remembering those last lines, hearing those final notes, has a galvanizing effect on my spirit. Hope it has the same on yours. Because every once in a while, you just need a song that feels like an affirmation.

Stay positive. Test negative. Wear a mask as needed. Get the vax. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

“Oh, what a beautiful morning. Oh, what a beautiful day. I got a beautiful feeling, everything’s going my way.”

Yes, Gordon MacRae is singing to me this morning. Part of an exercise to, um, exercise a more positive attitude.

In many ways, it is a beautiful morning. Though the sun is a whitish wisp behind a uniform chalky pale gray, the air is calm, windows are open, smoke isn’t actually entering the house, and nothing locally is on fire. See, I can be an optimist. It’s a cool 76 degrees F for now. Sunrise came prowling around my back door on or about 6:15 AM and sunset will get our attention at 8:16 PM here in the Rogue Valley area. The heat dome is still with us, feeding off the air and land temp. We expect a high of 102 plus. We expected that yesterday but didn’t achieve it as the smoke kept us below 96 degrees. Thanks, smoke!

Inside the house is our sanctuary. Not a large space. Nor fancy. But ours. Where we can walk around nude if we want. Laugh and argue. Read and eat. Sleep and bath. All in relative protection. Within it is my space. My desk. Laptop. Printer. Chair. Cats on three sides of me. Guarding or protecting me. I don’t know what they’re doing for sure. But they’re there, sleeping on the job. Snoring, purring, there.

Shifting from Oklahoma!‘s music, I’m now playing U2’s song, “The Fly”, from 1991. Always a little bit of a strange song to me. Not my favorite. But I was going through this one part that goes, “It’s no secret that a conscious can sometimes be a pest, it’s no secret ambition bites the nails of success. Every artist is a cannibal, every poet a thief. All kill their inspiration and sing about the grief.”

What I was thinking about that was drive. Effort. Persistence. Trying and striving. Don’t really see how it ties into those lyric, but that’s what my psyche came up with. Thinking about it more, I believe the song is associated with the album (Achtung Baby) which is part of a chain of time and events in my life in 1991.

All right. Stay positive. Test negative. Wear a mask as needed, and don’t try to bullshit yourself about whether it’s needed. And get the vax. Here’s the music.

Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

The rotations continue, no matter what is done, sunrise, sunfall. 5:46 AM, 8:47 PM in slice of world in southern Oregon. The revolution continues, despite what is done, carrying us through summer, speeding us toward autumn.

Today is Tuesday, July 13, 2021. Wildfires continue catching and growing. Two are contained, five more start. Smoke doesn’t fill the sky but bleaches the blue into a yellow-tinged gray haze. Fine grey granules, almost white, sprinkle cars and the land. Think of how they coat skin. Get into airways. Spread into lungs, interfering with body functions like breathing.

The smoke is a cooling shade, keeping temperatures from rising over one hundred F but unable to keep us from experiencing high nineties heat. Green has been dried out of the grasses. They turn into a sandy shade of brown.

But, you know, good news. COVID-19 vaccinations appear to be helping, where people are allowing themselves to be vaccinated. As disease variants rise, the unvaccinated and vaccinated become positive, but it’s the unvaccinated who are typically hospitalized and dying.

The other good news is that people are shedding their masks, unless they need it to deal with smoke (at least out here in the American west). Stores are opening. Restaurants. Movie theaters. One can again attend movies. Isn’t that good news? And the All-star break is underway. Good news, right? Good news.

While drought spreads in the west, places are flooding in the south and east as hurricanes and tropical storms strike. Did you see the photos of the flooded New York subway and roads? Places are also experiencing power outages. Sometimes from storms, sometimes because power is cut off due to wildfires, sometimes because the wildfires burn power lines. Melbourne, Australia is locked down again but the NFL is looking forward to full stadiums. There’s a water shortage growing in America but a housing boom is underway. The stock market has never been better, and look how that economy seems to be recovering. Also, the Emmy list has been released. That’s good news, isn’t it?

An ad on an Internet page seems it all up for me. Showing a pristine red and white Chevy Corvette from the early sixties, the ad informs me, “Jag EType” (that’s how they put it) “in any condition, nationwide.” While showing a Vette. Makes sense to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m an optimist. Hopeful. Hell, I keep grinding away on my writing routine. Must believe some future exists for it. Which brings me to the music.

Here’s the Pretenders from 1986. They do an homage to an old television show, “The Avengers”. My wife and I quite enjoyed that series as children. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, get the vax. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

Many songs that I remember have specific moments attached. They follow traditional, predictable patterns of love, success, pain, and failure.

Today’s song is hotly linked to success. It was 1999. Retired from the military, I was working in a medical device startup company. I began as the customer service manager. Then the company was bought out. And on this day, the new VP of marketing from the company who bought us had offered me a big promotion, to become a product manager, and I’d accepted.

The world looked great. This was in the summer in the Peninsula portion of the SF Bay Area known as Silicon Valley. I was in my car, a vehicle I enjoyed The sky was blue, the sun was bright and warm, and the future seemed amazing.

Traffic wasn’t bad either, as I left Highway 101 and I-280 behind me and headed west toward home on highway 92. For that day, I put in Bush, Sixteen Stone, and selected “Comedown” (1995).

Here are the lyrics that drew me that day:

‘Cause I don’t wanna come back down from this cloud
It’s taken me all this time to find out what I need
I don’t wanna come back down from this cloud
It’s taken me all this all this time

h/t AZlyrics.com

(BTW, I wanted to indent the lyrics to call them out, but can’t find the indent on this new, cumbersome, tedious, loaded WP editor. This is supposed to be a quick post; I don’t want to spend a lot of time searching through blocks and patterns, widgets and menus to find what used to be a simple matter. And where is the help? Oh, let me look for that.)

Don’t have a specific reason for this song in my head today. Just awoke to that beginning from the song. Maybe it was a dream thing, or a writing thing, or my generally foolish, optimistic nature.

But that’s today’s music.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Hey, come on in. Grab a drink. The party is just gettin’ started.

Yeah, I know the reality. This is make believe. We’re pretending all the restrictions have been lifted. A vaccine has been found. Testing is readily available. We rallied and rescued ourselves (with help from the world). And we helped others survive.

Now we’re entering recovery mode. A new prez is in the White House. Toilet paper is available. Gas is cheap, and restaurants and bars are open for business. We’re doing a little freedom party. We’re steppin’ out. So grab a drink (or pretend to drink one). It’s a virtual bar full of virtually everything, and it’s party PM.

In honor of all that, the song that came on for the start of this party is an old fan fave (yeah, I’m the fan). It always gets me movin’, putting a grin in my mood and jacking my spirits up.

Here’s “Gimme Some Lovin'” by The Spencer Davis Group from 1966. I’m so glad you made it.

Now, for the helluvait, another party fave: Prince, “1999” (1982). Cheers

 

 

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Drunk Muses

My muses seem drunk today.

Picture this: it’s a party, mostly of strangers, maybe co-workers who’ve never socialized outside of the office. Everyone is subdued, withdrawn and watchful, spying on others from safe corners and walls. Then some alcohol enters the scene. Glasses are filled. Sips are indulged. Alcohol slips into the bloodstreams. All start loosening up and chatting away, becoming livelier.

The latter are my muses today. They’ve had a few. Now they’re giggling and flirting, throwing ideas at me like I’m a dart board, frequently scoring high marks. As the scenes, characters, and ideas hit, I urge them, “Slow down, slow down, I can’t keep up.” That only encourages the tipsy little buggers to offer more at a faster rate, feeding off one another.

Not complaining, just noting. It’s a lot better than those days when the stand statuesque to the sad, cold and contemptuous, offering little other than disdain.

Got my coffee. Time to heed the muses and write like crazy before they pass out.

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Yellows

Wash me in yellow

the bright color of hopeful change

spritz me with marigolds

press me to get out of my lane

 

Soak me in yella

optimism and light

help me see past the madness and badness

and pursue what’s right

 

Drown me in yeller

make it an ocean of chance

a place where all are happy

and there’s singing and dance

 

Coat me in yellow

let it cover me all

like dazzling leaves on a tree

in the bright sunshine of fall

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Began streaming this 1970 song yesterday afternoon during my après-writing walk-about. “For united we stand, divided we fall, and if our backs should ever be against the wall, we’ll be together, together, you and I.”

Although I often get down (trigger a background streaming of Kool & The Gang performing “Jungle Boogie” (1973)) by world events, especially with the rise of white supremacy and a growing impression that large segments of America’s population are concerned about only themselves, leading to a de facto policy of screw everyone else, and the Earth, too, singing “United We Stand” by Brotherhood of Man (1970) lifted my spirits.

Listen. Sing along. Hope.

 

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