I’m often visited by earworms. It’s a chronic thing. Songs from across my lifetime drop by in the part of my head where music memories reside, the mental music stream. This often happens in the morning, giving that realm the name, morning mental music stream.
These songs don’t just drop in and depart. They’re normally on a tour that lasts several days. Well, I recently shared a song as my day’s theme music, “Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode. After dressing, heading out the door for the coffee shop this morning, I was singing it aloud as it played in the MMMS when I suddenly remembered Mom singing it to me once during a visit home, Mom, with her Doris Day voice.
Oh, that made me laugh. The song came out in 1989. I lived in Germany then, so I think it was when I came back to America in 1991 and visited her that the singing took place. I don’t know how she knew the song, but suspected it was through her daughters or grandchildren.
Hello, fellow travelers. Today is Whensday, January 24, 2024. For some reason, when I started typing the date, the autotype tried changing the date to December 19. WTAF?
Moody gray clouds tease rain threats and wrestle with the blue sky. Sunshine shoots between them as the clouds jostle to takeover. There may be factions up in the troposphere, arguing over what the weather should be like in Ashlandia, where the deer are numerous and an annual subject for disagreement in our burg. It’s 52 F and mostly cloudy, and the high should have the thermometer pausing at 56 F. It’s rained and it’s windy and more might be on the way.
Reading some emails this morning, an update from Scottie’s Playground came up: Jesus 2.0/Christopher Titus/Armegeddon Update. Seeing that headline, The Neurons instantly shuffled “Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode into the morning mental music stream (Trademark coming in two weeks). As Titus mentions, evangelicals have appointed DJT as their own personal Jesus. They tolerantly overlook his lying, cheating on his wives and affairs by declaring, “Everyone has a past,” and threat of violence, and snarl at the rest of us to stop being so mean to TFG and them. They’re just promoting this guy to make the world better, and they know this because god sent him!
While I cite the original Depeche Mode version of “Personal Jesus”, I also recommend and include the 2002 Johnny Cash cover. As his health was falling, JC — that’s Johnny Cash and not Jesus Christ — thoughtfully covered a number of rock songs, bringing a deeply personal delivery to them that makes ’em worth listening and thinking about.
In the means’ while, this is Whensday again because I’m weary of holding my breath and waiting for things to resolve, asking myself (drum roll), when will this be resolved? ‘This’, of course, is the Trump led, MAGA fueled, GOP supported, 3% funded effort to end Democracy in the United States. Whether that’s hyperbola is part of the whole Whensday question. We already know from experience that DJT was a sadsack of a POTUS, but weirdly, the MAGAs believe he was brilliant. I attribute a chunk of that to asymmetrical expectations.
Asymmetrical expectations were pointed out on Pondering Politics on Youtube when they dissected Gavin Newsome’s recent appearance on Bill Maher. Jessiah points out how differently the world, including the media, responds to the political parties in the US and their leaders when the MAGA segment unleashes a cruelly flavored shit storm versus reactions to when the Democratic side points something out, and Jessiah, our political nerd host, brings receipts. It’s worth a listen, IMO.
Stay pos, be strong, and keep leaning forward. Coffee has been sampled and approved, and is now being guzzled. Here’s the Cash and DM videos. Cheers
Today’s music choice began with a Billy Collins poem.
I don’t know what neuron decisions forced the stream of a Billy Collins poem to intersect with a 1989 song, but after a bit of that music, the Billy Collins poem moved aside, like a little Fiat 500 moves aside for a semi-tractor bearing down at seventy-five, its horn blowing like a child with a toy.
Wondering about the switch, I wondered if it was about faith and expectations running up against experience and reality. Maybe that was far-fetched.
For the record, the Billy Collins poem is “Nostalgia”. I can’t say that it’s my favorite B.C. poem because I like so many of them so much. I think that if I had to recommend just one B.C. poem, it would be “Forgetfulness”. It begins,
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
h/t to PoetrySoup.com
Love that poem. Anyway, here’s the song, “Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode.
Michael Seidel, writer 