Fed the cats, used the restroom, woke up (yeah, that was the order, to the best of my recollection, your honor), and realized I was humming “My Hero” by the Foo Fighters (1998). Thought it a good song for these times, when people need everyday heroes to manage commonplace matters.
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
(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.
I’m in the midst of a rebellion this morning. It began when my mind shouted, “No more news! Just back away for a little bit. Please do it. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Carefully, I backed away from my mind, eyeing it as I did, trying to gauge its temperament. “Is everything okay?” An innocuous question, I thought.
Too innocuous. “Is everything okay?” My mind launched into a rant that went in every direction at once. I let it rant, biding my time, until the rant petered out for lack of oxygen.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. No Facebook for a bit.”
“For the day!”
“Fine, fine, and no news? Really? You want to — “
“Stop.” My mind’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t try to guilt me, dude. I won’t have it.”
“I’m not trying to guilt you.”
My mind scoffed. “Sure. Who do you think you’re talking to? Your asshole? I’m your mind, baby. I know you better than you know me.”
I’ve been in these situations before. Time and space were demanded, needed. I would accommodate my mind. “Okay, then. What sort of theme song should I use today?”
My mind glowered for moments. Dark emotions flit over its face. Suddenly, like sunshine had burst through, he brightened. “Spin Doctors. “Little Miss Miss”, 1992.”
“Really?” I remembered when it came out. I was stationed at Onizuka AFB, then called an Air Station, in Sunnyv —
“Stop.”
“What?”
“No trips down memory lane. I don’t want to do any of that bullshit today. Just play the song and write the post.”
I nodded. “Okay, chum, you got it.”
My mind faked a gag. “Don’t call me chum.”
And that’s how today’s theme music selection was made.
Reading, hearing, and thinking about many black people’s comments yesterday and this morning, I realize (again, sadly) how often they live in tension and fear.
Yet, so many whites do as well – as witnessed by them recorded on videos calling police on blacks just because they’re black.
Blacks have a foundation for their fears; we’ve seen too many videos of police applying unnecessary force and violence on black people, or white people getting away with violence against black people, because, white…black.
As we watch and protest, counter-protest, or hold our breaths and wait, I thought about people and praying, and stumbled into Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer” (1986). The song is about a couple who have nothing but each other, who are hoping to make it together. As noted many times, the song was written during the Reagan era as trickle-down economics were touted. As we know, trickle-down is a bullshit theory that enables the wealthy to get wealthier and provides a cop-out to others, permitting them to issue tax cuts to the wealthy without remorse. (Yeah, and it certainly worked during the coronaivirus in America, as the wealthier managed to increase their wealth while a huge swath of Americans struggle between buying food or paying rent/house payments.)
Anyway…
Seems like, with high-unemployment, a corrupt Republican administration, continuing police brutality and militarization, protests, looting, riots, and then natural disasters AND the novel coronavirus, many in the United States are living on a prayer.
Today’s theme music has nuttin’ to do with politics, dreams, cats, or memories. It’s not prompted by introspection and self-questioning. It’s not in memory of a friend that passed away, and it’s not related to the news. It’s just a song by The Weeknd that I enjoy. “Blinding Lights” (2020) just keeps running in my mental stream. I suppose, if I think about the words — about being touched and empty cities — I can establish some rational reason why it’s jumped up out of slumbering brain masses, but it’s a good song, and I’m just going to enjoy it for a few minutes as just a good song.
Never saw the video before this. Takes half a minute to get into the song.
Today’s theme music is an Queen song from 1970, “Keep Yourself Alive”.
Keep yourself alive was my reflection to watching protests grow into riots as police and others escalate the situation. It’s been an ongoing mutter in my head as we deal with the novel coronavirus situation. Why practice social distancing, masking, isolation, and good hygiene? Well, to mitigate spreading the virus, to gain time to understand it, to gain time to allow our healthcare systems the chance to cope with it, and well, to keep ourselves alive until a vaccine can be found.
Thought it works well on this first day of June in the year of the riots and COVID-19.
Woke up this morning and after traipsing through the dreams, urged myself, come on, get up. Seize the day.
Not uncommon words. But my brain then latched on to other words, “One more time around might do it.”
I chased the threads while I did morning business, finally realizing that Soundgarden’s song, “The Day I Tried to Live” (1994), was trying to break through.
Singing, one more time around might do it One more time around might make it One more time around might do it One more time around I might make it The day I tried to live, yeah
Watching the riots remind me of my youth. Born in 1956 in the U.S., we had riots frequently in the sixties.
This month’s riot began when George Floyd, a black man, was apprehended by police, and died, allegedly for something involving forged documents.
Death by police officer is surely the response for such a heinous suspicion, right?
Watching police brutality in 1971, Obie Benson questioned what he was seeing. With Al Cleveland and Marvin Gaye, the thoughts were put into a song that became a Marvin Gaye hit. At that time, protesters were standing up against the Vietnam War. Police, demonstrating the restraint that we’ve come to know well from them, waded in, resulting in what became known as “Bloody Thursday”.
We’ve seen it many times; protests arise. Unless you’re white and armed (see Michigan this year), the police are gonna come hard. (Didn’t help that the POTUS (ever thoughtful and considered in his response) said, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” quoting the Miami police chief from the 1967 riots).
The government is by the people and for the people, until the people speak up against the government (unless, again, you’re armed and white in the woke United States) (witness the frequency of armed white males killers with automatic weapons being peacefully apprehended), then look out, people.
BTW, this post was created with the new WP editor. Initial question: WTF did it need to change? Evolutionary improvements, I understand. I thought the other was an intuitive system. Now they want me to ‘insert blocks’, which include such common blocks such as ‘paragraphs’. Christ.
Their little floating block editor jumps in front of text, forcing you to navigate around it to see WTF is going on.
No matter what political party you are, learning that the nation’s President promotes such unreasoning violence and ideals contrary to the nation’s principles is, well, sickening. Is this how the country is united? Is that really the best course to promote as riots break out in cities over another black man’s death as he begged the police officer holding him down, as our nation passes one hundred six thousand deaths from the coronavirus, a time when we should be pulling together, where everyone insists, “We’re in this together?”
While I often hear screams from those on the right about how Democrats are not civil and should respect the President and treat him with courtesy, how can I — why would I? — when he’s encouraging murder against the political opposition?
So, the song by Badfinger, “No Matter What” (1970), arrives in my brain. No matter what is fused directly to getting Trump out of office; no matter what Biden does, I will vote for him, a position that I hate to take. Biden isn’t my first, second, or third choice. I grimace thinking about it, having my thought processes and principles reduced to that single point: vote Trump out. Sickening and infuriating. Biden, if elected, will probably do a decent job, but I really want to advance the nation and world past the status quo where we muddle from crises to crises, issue to issue, putting bandages on problems while rot spreads.
No matter what also comes up as I write my way through this pandemic. No matter what, I’ll write. No matter what, I’ll pursue my dreams.
Yeah, reading the news, following the latest Trumpstorm (“Unfair! I’m shutting down twitter!”), and articles about states under reporting COVID-19 case numbers and deaths (in other words, let’s pretend it’s not so bad, and it’ll all be okay), and another senseless killing (George Floyd – so how was forging a check a threat to those four officers, and why did that fucker keep his knee on his neck when Floyd said, “I can’t breathe”?), with subsequent protests and rioting, while bots push the re-open buttons and people scream about rights (and mock about privilege), and we wait to see what the fuck is going to happen next, Ratt’s classic hit song, “Round and Round” (1984), plays on an endless loop:
“Round and round; what goes around, comes around, I’ll tell you why. Dig.”
Michael Seidel, writer 