Once again, my chosen theme music arrives via a dream, but is selected because it stays stuck in my mental stream. That forces me to sing it aloud and share it with others to remove it from my traps.
The dream was about neighbors, friends, and food. It was quite chaotic. At the end, almost like the music to the final scene, “With A Little Help From My Friends” plays. It’s the original 1967 Beatles version, sung by Ringo, a song version that’s both morose and jaunty in my ears. Not my favorite version (yes, that would be Joe Cocker) but it’s the one that was in my dream, so here we go.
As an aside, driven by my reflections on the dream and the song, the song came out when I was eleven, making the song fifty-two years old. Where does the time go?
After reading the news updates yesterday, I mourned the patterns, the things we keep doing and won’t change. Haven’t we seen this show before? Assassinating leaders and promoting greater violence while claiming to be de-escalating. We’ve changed centuries; shouldn’t we change our tactics and strategy. No; they continue to fight the last war and run the last political campaign. Of course, there are some that lap it up and beg for more.
The timing was impeccable for this murder. Australia burning, glaciers melting, people fleeing wars and droughts as other nations turn refugees away, but hey, let’s de-escalate by killing others.
Out of that, I started singing Steve Winwood’s “Freedom Overspill” (1986).
Keep on talking all you want
Well you don’t waste a minute of time
Who cares, who knows what’s true
Coffee and tears the whole night through
Burning up on midnight oil
And it’s come right back on you
Freedom Overspill
Freedom Overspill
Force of habit, you could say
The way they talk you’re talking away
Who cares, who knows what’s true
Your wounded pride is burning you up
Burning up on midnight oil
And it’s come right back on you
h/t to Metrolyrics.com cuz’ cutting and pasting song lyrics is easier.
That ‘Force of habit’ line is what hooked me. Nations, like people, fall into habits, especially as leadership and thinking diminishes. Like marketing, they think, well, this worked before. Press drumbeats follow soon. We’ve seen it happen so many times already in this young century.
It takes strength and awareness to change. Does anyone out there have it?
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.”
I was speaking with Boo, a backyard panther who wandered into our lives several years ago. He was in great shape so I thought that he must be lost. His people were never found and he stayed with us.
Many issues reside in Boo, dealing with trust, other cats, movement, sounds, etc. He seems a little psycho to us. Sweet but psycho is our description of him.
That’s literally the name of a 2018 Ava Max song, “Sweet but Psycho”. It would’ve been surprising if its melody hadn’t sprung into my stream and on into history as today’s theme music.
“Oh, he’s sweet but a psycho, a little bit psycho.” That’s about all that really fits Boo from the song.
Walking with a sense of ennui yesterday, I noticed several blue cars. Teslas, Priuses, Subarus, Volkswagens, BMWs…it was an odd parade of mostly blue cars, with a few silver and green in the mix. All those blue cars brought home the 1996 song, “Counting Blue Cars” by Dishwalla.
I always identified this song with ennui. They’re counting cars and jumping over cracks, like children do, asking questions, like children do, like some people often do without end, searching for an answer, not knowing the question.
“Follow me.” She took the movers into the backyard. It’d been a last minute decision but was appropriate.
A foot taller than her, they followed her out into the immaculate backyard. Winter had drained its color and autumn had jerked the leaves from the trees but a sense of comfort embraced her as she wrapped her sweater around her shoulders, glanced up at the milky sun, and limped across the grass.
A innocuous rock about a foot high and a foot wide rested in one corner in sunshine by a patch of dirt. She pointed at it. “This rock. I want this rock to go, too.”
The movers, without exchanging looks, said, “Yes, ma’am.” The three encircled the rock and studied it. She said, “I’ll leave you to it.”
Turning, she strode back into the house, casting eyes over the cottage. She and her husband had bought it twenty-one years before, ten years after they’d retired, coming up here for a more relaxed life. Then came the cat, a tiny tabby mewing on her porch as rain poured outside. The husband had died later that year. The cat, though, had lasted for twenty-one. The rock had been the cat’s favorite sitting place in the back. Sunshine always found the rock, and Pebble, named for her petite size, always found the rock.
She could leave the house – had to, really, because small as it was, it was too much for her now – but she wouldn’t leave the rock. The cat was gone, but she’d always have the rock. And who knows? Maybe in the new place, she’d put the rock on the tiny balcony and perhaps find a new feline companion.
Or maybe it’d find her, as Pebble had.
It would be nice to have another rock in her life.
NOTE: Someone posted a photo of a mover carrying a large, unpretentious rock into an apartment. Others wondered why someone was moving a rock into an apartment.
Hey, the twenties are almost upon us. This hasn’t gone unnoticed. Almost all of the NYE parties in our town have been inspired to throw a roaring twenties party.
My wife and I are not impressed that they’re paying homage to a decade that ended in the Great Depression. My parents weren’t yet born; her parents, who are deceased, were born in that decade. Nothing about it inspires me to want to party.
No, I’m a child of the rock era. For my theme music for 2019, I’m going with a Prince classic, “1999”, from, um, 1982.
Join my party, or pop up a song that you would like to carry you into a new year and decade. Happy New Year!
I was dreamin’ when I wrote this
So sue me if I go 2 fast
But life is just a party, and parties weren’t meant 2 last
War is all around us, my mind says prepare 2 fight
So if I gotta die I’m gonna listen 2 my body tonight
Counseling myself last night as I stepped out and hunted stars through the descending night fog, I thought about plans, and how easy it is to slip into a comfortable rut and let yourself stay there, successful in the rut to the detriment of everything else. I realized that I’d done that to myself. Easy to do, especially when the rut gives you joy.
My rut is writing. It satisfies me in so many ways, but it definitely steals energy from the rest of my life. I knew I had to shift myself out of my rut when I had my response to agents being interested in some of my work and my response was, meh. That’s just not right.
So I began hunting and shifting the mental and emotional levers to ply myself from my rut. More easily said, am I right? The duality of it all struck me. I’m a person that feels the darkness and rages about once a month, ready to shuck everything in fury and despair. Then that passes and I’m good to go again. I’m fortunate that I know my cycle and cope with it, but not fortunate that I have such a cycle. I’m fortunate, too, that I can see into myself and find the levers to change the cogs. This comes from being sixty plus and having friends and relatives who’d make comments to me that opened my awareness to how others see me, subsequently providing me with greater insight into myself. It comes from luck, too; others know these things but struggle more with it than me. (Yeah, and there’s a ton of other stuff, nature vs. nurture, socialization, genes, etc. We’re dynamic, complicated beings, always playing on the balance of a blade.)
Well, to the music, then, because this is about the day’s theme music. Into this crucible of thought flowed words from “Over My Head (Cable Car)” by The Fray (2005).
Everyone knows I’m in
Over my head
Over my head
With eight seconds left in overtime
She’s on your mind
She’s on your mind
h/t to Songmeanings.com for the lyrics, because it’s easier to get them right by copying and pasting.
It was that ‘eight seconds left in overtime’ that I keyed to, not that there was pressure, nor that time was running out, rather the impetus from the image of a sports game that something needs to be done. The goals are clear; now execute. Get ‘er done.
Laborious explanation for a song choice, innit? Happy Monday, campers. Cheers
Today’s theme choice began as I slapped my head and asked, “What am I thinking? Where is my mind?”
I was annoyed with myself for being distracted, feeling like I haven’t been remembering things as I should (and partially blaming writing because I was becoming more intense about it).
Then, “Where is my mind?” circled through again. Parts of a song were seen and heard like minnows flashing in and out of a creek’s shadows. I believed that I knew such a song. I thought, well, I can search for it on the net but I wanted to give myself the chance to remember it.
More song peeked out. I remembered, oh, a movie. Wait, is that right? Yes, yes, there was a movie, the song was used in a movie. I remembered that the movie was Fight Club, and then, like it was beamed into my brain, I recalled, oh, the Pixies, “Where Is My Mind?” That made me laugh. I wasn’t sure what year the song emerged and had to look that up (and also confirm that it’d been used in Fight Club). Yes, to the movie, and 1988.
Listening to this song always makes me smile. Don’t know why. Wow, where is my mind?
Out of an overheard apology as I passed a couple on the street came an overused phrase, “It was just the heat of the moment.” She said it in a dry monotone.
I wondered what’d been said before. Couldn’t say from glancing at the middle-aged couple, he, neatly bearded, in jeans and a silver puffy jacket, she with short blonde hair swept across her forehead, in a tight black jacket, matching tight leggings (don’t know what they’re really called now), and purple running shoes. Sunglasses dancing with reflections hid their eyes.
Here came the old (well, half a lifetime ago (1982) – over a lifetime ago, for some) Asia song, “Heat of the Moment”.
Michael Seidel, writer 