I read about a Yemeni mother and her son. The Trump administration had separated the two-year old boy from his mother. The boy was dying. After months of separation, the mother was allowed into the country to see her son. He died shortly afterward.
Paul Simon’s “Mother and Child Reunion” (1972) played in my stream after reading the news.
Oh, little darling of mine
I can’t for the life of me
Remember a sadder day
I know they say “let it be”
But it just don’t work out that way
And the course of a lifetime runs
Over and over again
I’ve been hearing “Girls Like You” (Maroon 5, 2018) often in the coffee shop, enough that my mind has absorbed it. I’ve begun using it (with modifications) when I feed my cats in the A.M.
“Cats like you need a guy like me to feed them. Yeah, yeah.”
Other verses follow, depending on my mood. It’s a fun video.
A friend was once singing today’s song, “Timothy”, by the Buoys, shortly after it was high on the pop charts. I asked him if he knew what this song was about, because listening closely, it seemed like it was about two guys eating the third one with them, Timothy.
I probably haven’t thought about the song since ’bout the time of that conversation in 1971. Recalling the song last night, I looked it up. Yep, it was about a cave in, and the two survivors eating the other, with the singer claiming that he must have blacked out, but he awoke with a full stomach.
Strangest to me, I learned that Rupert Holmes, who wrote and sang, “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” (1979), wrote “Timothy”.
That’s the net’s fun aspect, looking things up to answer, what the hell?
Today’s theme music is Live’s “Lightning Crashes” (1993).
I have several Live albums, but I find I must be in just the right mood to play them. It’s a very narrow space.
“Lightning Crashes”, though, came to me this week because one of my nieces gave birth to her third child. All this was shared on Facebook. Everyone is doting on the sweet newborn, including my mother, and there’s rich photographic evidence. The newborn is Mom’s seventh great-grandchild. That juxtaposition of Mom holding this young new life invited “Lightning Crashes” into my stream and the circle of transference of life and existing. One dies, and one is born, and so it goes. There’s a lot of overlap as it happens.
Time for another visit with the Alan Parsons Project. This song, “I Wouldn’t Want to be Like You”, came out in 1977. I awoke with it bouncing around my stream, along with songs about rain. I went with Alan Parsons.
Today’s theme music came out when I was three years old. It’s so damn popular, though, I imagine anyone who follows American pop-culture even peripherally is familiar with it.
The Isley Brothers originated “Shout”. Mom was an Isley Brothers fan, so of course I grew up hearing it. The song made a huge comeback when Otis Day and the Knights performed it in Animal House (1978). It then became quite popular for dead bug dancing. Green Day and Robbie Williams both did the song. The song was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Come on, you must know one version of it.
In honor of the gopher dream that I had last night, I thought I’d use Kenny Loggins’ song, “I’m Alright” from Caddyshack (1980).
As an outside, I was stationed in Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan, the following year. VCRs were becoming big. We bought one. Caddyshack was one of the first movies we rented and played on it. A popular movie, it was played in the MAC Terminal to entertain people while they awaited flights. The command post where I worked was located in that terminal. It seemed like it was on whenever I left the command post. It came to drive me nuts.
I haven’t seen it in years, and I don’t want to see it, thank you. Meanwhile, Kenny did pretty good with movie songs for a while, didn’t he?
Today’s song choice, “You Talk Too Much” by Joe Jones, was fluttering along my mindstream this morning when I awoke. It seems like I’ve known it my whole life. Small wonder there. Wikipedia states that it was released in 1960. I was four then, but Mom liked playing it and singing it. I remember her singing it to me whenever I was pestering her for something, apparently her counter-measure to my non-stop demand. It would infuriate me to the point of stamping my feet as I demanded that she stop singing.
That just made her smile as she continued singing.
This is a twofer Thursday post, featuring a dream and a song, because this song started in my dreamstream.
It was a turbulent stream, with multiple vignettes and one-act plays. I think the music made this one memorable.
“Conquistador” began playing in the dream. Hearing it, I said, “Hey, I know this song. “Conquistador”. Procol Harum.” After remembering hearing the song’s live version in high school in the early seventies, and talking to my friend, Bob, about it (in the hall in front of the art classroom, by my locker, where he was talking overly loudly and enthusiastic, trying to catch some girl’s attention), I thought about other Procol Harum music I know and wondered where the music was coming from. I couldn’t identify its source.
All that was backdream. I was in my most recurring dreamscape, which is dark green, slightly rolling hills. I seem to know or I remember such hills most often out of dreams. Accompanied by several friends, we were admiring two exotic hyper cars, a Lamborghini and Ferrari, that belonged to others, and discussing their styling, price, and performance capabilities.
My friends were envious, but I said, “Yes, but my car is faster than either of them, and costs more.”
They were skeptical. So was I. I thought my ride would be there by now. As it wasn’t, I didn’t think my ride was going to arrive, and was becoming anxious.
“Conquistador” ended, and my ride arrived, a stunning silver Aston Martin. “Wow,” I said, along with my friends. “Wow.” I never believed it would arrive.
Michael Seidel, writer 