World seems almost black and white out there with this dense fog smothering it all. No chameleons lying in the sun, because there’s no sunshine. Just the bleah.
So, this rocking, simplistic song with this driving beat seems a fine song for a COVID-19 Friday. Run runaway.
Ever been out, doin’ your thang, mindin’ your own bizness, when suddenly, ‘lo, an urgent need strikes? Maybe it’s urgent hunger; you’re suddenly famished. Or thirst. You need coffee — stat. Or maybe it’s the worst one, you feel the need to pee…urgently.
Such happened to me yesterday afternoon. Halftime had started for the rain. I thought I’d get some outside walking in. I’d headed up into the hills around and behind my house. One mile became two, two became three.
I was monitoring where I was and deliberately plotting my routes. I knew I was about a mile from home. Dusk was slithering in. I’d descended down to Siskiyou Boulevard. Four-forty-five, cars passing had their headlights on. I was torn between putting on more distance when the need to pee struck urgently.
Naturally, as I pondered my sit. and debated options, a song provided distraction. In this case, it was “Urgent” (1981) by Foreigner.
“Urgent! Urgent! Urgent! Emergency.” I think that’s how the lyrics go.
Enjoy your day. Wear a mask, please, and social distance. I know it’s been a while, and you’re getting weary, but the payoff by staying strong is that it’s better for us as a civilization.
I was spying on neighbors this morning, verifying that they followed their regular routines. All seemed alive (although some moved like zombies) and in good health (but such appearances may be deceptive, no?). Each followed their recurring and regular, sharply predictable, Tuesday morning routines.
My routines are not predictable — in the mornings. Writing, I set my structure. As socializing and common activities like shopping or heading out for a cuppa are curtailed, my day is a freeflow form. What do I want to do, and when do I want to do it, along with what needs to be done regarding health, house, and history, right?
All that thinking about busy activities stirred thinking about insects, spiders, and ants. That invited the 1994 song, “Ants Marching”, by The Dave Matthews Band.
Today’s theme song thinking finds one of the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s melodic songs from earlier this century in my head.
I looked out to check the weather. The rain had abated. Sunshine was making its way in like it could use a cup of coffee, and the temp was stumbling into the upper forties.
Not bad. No snow. I wondered if snow were on the ridges on the valley’s other side. Thinking of snow brought on RHCP’s 2006 song, “Snow (Hey Oh)”. My mind lit on that one chorus.
It’s raining this weekend. I like a nice, solid rain, which is what we’ve received. Brew some coffee and chill with relaxing rain sounds. I shouldn’t be surprised that a song about rain entered the mental stream yesterday. That it was Bob Dylan and “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35″ surprised me.
I was finishing up shaving and such when I thought out of nowhere, what’s Bob Dylan’s real name? I came up with Zimmerman but took a few more seconds to remember Robert. And then the song began.
I used this song as theme music back in October, 2017. Its mocking, rambunctious nature always entertains me. The song came out in 1966. I was ten, so the song passed under my radar. But when I became aware of it a few years later, I thought, yeah, this is about getting high. After doing a paper for a pop culture class years later, I appreciated the play on words, how people are throwing stones at others for imagined slights.
Pretty appropriate for these years, in which stones are slung for every damn thing, right? Have a good one. Wear your mask. Enjoy life.
After the morning’s dream review, Steve Winwood’s 1986 hit, “Higher Love”, punched into my mental stream. The album it was on, Back in the High Life, was a favorite. I frequently played it as part of my life activities. Although “Roll with It” is my favorite Winwood solo song, “Higher Love” is up there on the list, so I thought, why not? Works well for today.
Hope you enjoy it. Have a good one, wherever you are, and wear a mask, okay?
You ever think, “Boy, I could use somebody to…” do X? Complete the sentence. Fill in the blank.
I haven’t thought those words in a long time. When I managed people, I often thought that. Juggling resources and priorities was a constant. Not too infrequently, it ended with, “Boy, I could use somebody.”
This came to mind yesterday, after Veteran’s Day in the U.S. As a veteran, I have many veteran friends. Photos of them back in the day rolled into Facebook.
So I was remembering when with some of them. One in particular was an intelligent but withdrawn guy when he worked for me. He seemed like he lacked self-confidence, that he could be a lot more than what he was showing. Another section came to me and said those words, “I could use somebody…”
This guy was the choice. The officer with the need was dubious, but my guy blossomed. From that, you could see the change in him manifest. It was something to behold. Leaving the military after eight years, he went into tech, where his talents and intelligence were applied and rewarded.
The phrase itself, “I could use somebody”, cropped up when I was shopping for cat food during my day out. A woman said that to a store employee. That then triggered a foray into mental writing as I went about my business, creating a scene that I wrote after I returned home, centered on the phrase, “I could use somebody.”
Lot of disparate thinking to reach today’s theme music. But each time the phrase, “use somebody” passed through the mental stream, my strangely wired neurons said, “Playing ‘Use Somebody’ by Kings of Leon, 2008.” So, really, this is about getting a song out of my head. I enjoy Caleb’s enunciation of the phrase in the song. It’s a good song to sing when it hits the radio and you’re alone in the car. Just sayin’.
We drove over to Medford for some errands yesterday. It’s just four Interstate exits away, less than ten miles as the Mazda rolls. While there, songs about being in a city topped my mental stream during quiet moments.
I like cities and their energy but admit, I think of them as a good place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. The city’s energy steals too much of my energy in general — it’s the people, you know. But Medford is not a large city. It’s a very comfortable experience outside of the current COVID-19 restrictions and limitations. Not bad at all, though were were there for only two hours, including the drive to and from.
Amazing number of excellent songs about cities and being in the city. An old Joe Walsh favorite percolated in. “In the City” (1979) was originally by him and put into a movie, The Warriors. Joe joined the Eagles. They liked his song and included it on their album. Now, you often hear it attributed to the Eagles.
What interests about the song is how it’s a soft reflection of the city not being a very nice place. Yet the refrain, “In the city,” is a gentle, wistful wind throughout the song. Well, that’s how I hear it in my head.
Hope you have a good one. Wear a mask, please. Cheers
Several times a month, a song or fragment hits my auditory stream and lingers. Some call this an earworm. I call it an annoyance.
Once in a while, I post those as my theme music to get them out of my head. It seems to work. Sometimes, though, the stuck song isn’t deserving of being the day’s theme music.
That’s the case today. This song isn’t the theme song, but I’m sharing it with you. It’s from a famous movie, so you might now it.
Yes, it’s “The Thermos Song” by Steve Martin from The Jerk (1979).
I don’t want it for today’s theme music.
As The Jerk came out in 1979, I started thinking about that year. While placing myself in that moment, my mind had a perverse idea, introducing The Smashing Pumpkins’ song, “1979”, from 1996, in my head. Oh, that brain, what a rascal.
It’s been over a year since I used “1979” for a theme song. (Yeah, I looked it up.) Why not, I thought. 1979 was a simpler time for me. Not for others, of course. As we slide over the time spectrum, time and life, and their impact on us, shift. Sometimes things skip off his like a stone skimming across a still pond. Other days, news whacks us like an asteroid taking the Yucatan Peninsula.
For me, though, best memories are not the ugly ones, but the sweet ones where I remember laughing with friends, getting ready to go out, and generally worrying about things other than drought, war, pandemics, politics, and climate change. It was like a day of freedom from stress.
Not all people have such stress-free days, but I’ve had some. Some of them were back in 1979. Mind you, that wasn’t a stress-free era. We still lived under the threat of nuclear war. Mr. Jimmy Carter was POTUS, and the Iran Hostage crises was the story of the day. But besides all that, I went to the movie theater with my cousins and wife in San Antonio to watch a movie called The Jerk.
It’s a cold, wet, chilly, dull, day. Yeah, I know that cold and chilly seem redundant. I think the day calls for it.
Like, where is the sun? Out there somewhere, I surmise from ambient lighting. Just not breaking through. Not warming us up.
We’ve been wanting rain, so complaints are moot. We’ve been enjoying an October and November warm spell. I like that expression, ‘warm spell’. It was in the low seventies here last week, down into the mid forties at night with, as Alexa puts it, “a lot of sunshine throughout the day”.
Of course, we needed rain and wanted rain. Actually need snow to build up our Cascades snowpack. The snowpack is our summer water supply.
But I’m a ranter (which reminds me of the ol’ Dr. Pepper commercial, “I’m a ranter, he’s a ranter, she’s a ranter, wouldn’t you like to be a ranter, too?”). With that done, naturally, my head turned to music. What music speaks to me from this weather and this rant?
Why, the Rascals with their 1968 song, “People Got to Be Free”. Yeah, that makes total sense. Who else do you think of when all the leaves are brown and the sky is gray, right?
I think the Rascals song arrived via a Venn splice in my mental stream, where dreams, current events, and music came together. One dream featured a 1968 Camaro. I had one, once, pushing the nostalgia buttons. That may’ve called the song up on the mental shuffle.
Politically speaking, the song fits the times.
You should see, what a lovely, lovely world this would be If everyone learned to live together It seems to me such an easy, easy thing this would be Why can’t you and me learn to love one another All the world over, so easy to see People everywhere just wanna be free I can’t understand it, so simple to me People everywhere just got to be free Ah, ah, yeah . . . ah, ah, yeah If there’s a man who is down and needs a helping hand All it takes is you to understand and to see him through Seems to me, we got to solve it individually And I’ll do unto you what you do to me
These are, of course, socialist thoughts that progressives like me push, that so many others fear. Helping others? Everyone equal and free? Why, how barbaric.
Have you read this far? Then, thanks. Have a good one. And wear a mask, please. For all of us. Merry Christmas.
Michael Seidel, writer 