Walking through the town that’s my home, the many vacant faces I encountered coaxed “1979” by the Smashing Pumpkins (1996) into my stream.
So many people use vacant, unwilling or unable to look at others. Their faces are often empty and sad. Wealthy, poor, homeless, students, male and female, I wonder what’s going on with them? Does life have them distracted, or are they hollow people?
Always something to think about when you’re walking, you know? Distractions from the dreams, they often end up as additions to the writing in progress.
It was a blah night of sleeping. Weird dreams, of course. At a convention. I’d brought my own coffee. Had a huge bag of roasted beans. They kept spilling out of the bag, but also my coat and pants pockets. That was just one of many bizarre elements.
After I rose, I remained groggy. Rainy and chilly outside, but I liked that. Wanted some upbeat music but the stream found nothing. Started drifting through Foreigner, Free, Foghat. Like, why am I going through groups that start with F? Can I buy a clue. Then Canned Heat, the Doors, and The Allman Brothers played a bit.
Wasn’t until I was making breakfast when something suitable, something that arrived for this low-energy hump day.
Here’s Prince, ’84, “Let’s Go Crazy”. Let’s get nuts.
After reading some news last night and this morning, my anger spilled over. “You must be evil,” I said in my head to several of the articles’ principals, evil for how their minds work, evil for their indifference about what their actions do to the world or other creatures, evil for their willingness to rationalize murdering and victimizing.
From that came, quite deliberately, Chris Rea’s 1989 song, “You Must Be Evil”.
How ’bout a little new wave on a Monday morning? Something slightly enigmatic from Duran Duran, something from 1984.
Nineteen Eighty-Four, la novel, had a heavy impact on many of us. False information from the government? Perpetual war, and war as a marketing tool? Big brother, and being spied upon, marked as an enemy of the state if you didn’t conform, with everything constantly monitored?
Rocking out to Bare Naked Ladies “One Week” (1998) in my mindstream as I walked today. Why them? Not sure of the stream’s origins. Here are the lines that were in my mind:
Chickity China the Chinese chicken
You have a drumstick and your brain stops tickin’
Watchin’ X-Files with no lights on
We’re dans la maison
I hope the Smoking Man’s in this one
Like Harrison Ford I’m getting frantic
Like Sting I’m tantric
Like Snickers, guaranteed to satisfy
The song’s weird rap lyrics, strung around the fight between a couple, appeals to me because of its insights. The guy singing it knows how this fight went, and he knows how reconciliation will go, and he’s laughing at it. Most of us develop these insights into relationships. We know the little steps followed between growing annoyance, rising anger, the fight or disagreement, and the subsequent make-up.
It might be today’s sunny weather that kicked this song into the stream. We were house shopping in California when this song was released and rose in 1998. The connections could be that I was thinking, it’s a a beautiful day. Not being satisfied with that, I went on, flashing on sunshine splashing off waves and lamenting, I wish I was at the ocean. That triggered memories of glorious days in Half Moon Bay, where we eventually bought a place to live.
Or, maybe all that is just bullshit, and my mind just heard a noise that triggered the song, and so it began.
After a night of interesting dreams – no family, games or military, but soup, spilling, and reach – I awoke and turned to thinking about the novel-in-progress. I focused on where I’d stopped yesterday, conducting a what’s-next exercise. Then I catapulted into more generalities before spinning the wheel to think about the greater story.
The muses were present and engaged, so it was a comfortable exercise. One said, “We can do this,” and another said, “I know we can.” “Yes, we can,” a third said.
That’s when I realized that they were channeling a 1973 Pointer Sisters song, “Yes We Can Can”. Although mostly about politics, change, and unity, it’s a powerful, energetic song about trying and confidence, too.
We got to iron out our problems
and iron out our quarrels
and try to live as brothers.
And try to find peace within
without stepping on one another.
And do respect the women of the world.
Remember you all have mothers.
Nineteen seventy-three. It was yesterday, and faraway. Here we are, dealing with madness in the White House, and setting up for more military conflict in the Middle-East. You know, because bombing other lands has all gone sooo well.
TCB. Takin’ care of business. I don’t know when the expression started, but it was in use everywhere I was by the time I reached a walkin’ talkin’ age, and I was using it by the late sixties. People would ask, “What’s up?” We, the pseudo-hip, would reply, “Oh, you know, TCB.”
Bachman-Turner Overdrive – BTO – formalized it in a song for us. It came out in 1974, the year I graduated from high school and joined the military. It feels like I’ve been taking care of business ever since.
As a side note, was a movie, later, “Taking Care of Business”, with Jim Belushi and Charles Grodin, which I didn’t find too funny. Weirdly, Stewart Copeland who was the drummer for the Police, did the music for the movie.
Anyway, here’s today’s song. I’m sure you’re out there taking care of business, so feel free to stream this as you do. Its beat will help keep you movin’.
Give yourself a million points* if you recognized “Burnin’ for You” by Blue Oyster Cult from 1981. Collect all the points for a chance to win big prizes.
*Points redeemable at any Points 4 Us location. No expiration date. Void in all fifty states, Washington, D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Cash value is one millionth of a cent. Not redeemable for cash. The points are completely bogus, which is beside the point.
I thought I’d offer something light for the heavy part of the week, the thick middle often called hump Wednesday. This little ditty – no, not abut Jack and Diane – makes a simple plea. I just want to feel the day, feel okay, and know I’m okay. It is a song with a refrain that offers other possibilities. I use to sing, “I just want to eat a cake, eat a cake, eat a cake, today.” You know what I mean.
I woke up streaming Third Eye Blind’s 1997 song, “Semi-Charmed Life”. Although the song arrived after a flotilla of dreams, I don’t…oh, wait, there might’ve been a connection. Just saw it.
“Semi-Charmed Life” sounds very poppish, with it’s varying cadences, the doo-doo-doo, and softer, gentler inflections. Much of the words are sung fast, but trying to hear them when it came out, I thought, “It sounds like he said she goes down on him.” Eventually, search engines developed the wherewithal to fulfill powerfully important tasks like learning song lyrics.
Yes, she did say she goes down on me. Yes, they were also singing about chopping a line, and that part about crystal meth? Yes, it’s in there, too. Later, though, on other stations, those lines were gone, yes, edited out, censored. Don’t want people hearing that sort of thing. Close your ears, children. Don’t want to poison the air with words about drug use.
(Reminds me of those places like North Carolina who FORBID using those blasphemous words, climate-change. If they don’t talk about it, it won’t happen, right? And everyone will live happily on the beach, building new developments and golf courses forever. Love that logic.)
You really should listen to that bouncing, free-association, sing-song sloppy rhymes, besides the soft ones when he sings, “I want something else.” When you put it all together, it’s reflective and powerful, with desperate edges, but ironically poppish.
Michael Seidel, writer 