My mental iPod shuffle (completely wireless) played many songs today, starting with some Pink Floyd and Boston. Much of this was provoked by reading others’ posts, including one about the song, “King of the Run” by Roger Miller. I once dressed up as a hobo (I don’t think it was for Halloween), and using a candy cigarette, imitated Roger Miller doing his song (yeah, I’d seen it on television). After some Carly Simon and Jewel, I stepped outside and began walking.
That changed the stream. As I breathed the air, more Pink Floyd popped in, but the stream finally settled on U2, “Beautiful Day” (2000). So here we are.
Today’s music choice is dream fallout. This song was in the dream stream and got kicked into the conscious stream after I got up. Now it’s stuck in there on a loop, which is driving me nuts, so it’s being shared to spit it out of the stream.
Slowing it down today. Thursday, innit? I’m starting to brake for the weekend, let me slide in there nice and gentle.
One of my preferred U2 albums is The Joshua Tree. A number of songs from that album speak to me, including “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. After the song was released, I often reflected that I was still looking, and I often didn’t know what I was looking for. In the years since, I’ve refined my sense of what I’m looking for. I attribute my writing efforts to closing that gap; writing prompts introspection and thinking about, well, what I’m thinking. It all helps.
The thing about the song as well is how it plays against a greater theme. Consider the import of the lyrics as Bono sings about climbing highest mountains, run through fields, and scaled city walls to be with someone. The stuff of true love, right? But yet, he still hasn’t found what he’s looking for. It’s like, they thought that one thing would satisfy their itch, only to achieve it and realize, that’s not it.
Most of us have been there, hey? We have a gap, ache, or longing, and we’re trying to understand it, and then, understanding it, try to understand how to fulfill it. It often feels with the journey of our life. People fill us with tales about how work, love, or having children will fulfill us, but that doesn’t work for all. Some find fulfillment with God or nature. Some of us look for it in art.
Okay, don’t know why the stream introduced this song today. See, the stream works in mysterious ways. See, right there, the stream immediately wants to flow with another song. Therefore, we’ll have *drumroll* A THURSDAY TWOfer.
First up, we have a 1964 entry, the Rolling Stones covering “Time Is on My Side”. As I wrote, I don’t know why I’m streaming it. I was eight when it came out, but I’m familiar with the song because I have seven or eight Stones CDs, and it’s on one or two of ’em. I don’t think my dreams prompted this stream. Dreams were strange — of course, yeah? — and included muddy water and male relatives from my wife’s side of the tree. Nothin’ ’bout time was featured, but it’s stuck in me head and must be released.
The second, almost naturally, has to be “Mysterious Ways” by U2 (1991). You see how that’s all connected, yeah? Sure.
Let it rock, let it roll. (And that triggered a THIRD song, but we’ll stop now.) Hope one of them works for your theme song today. If you got another, get yer ya-yas out, and let me know.
Rattle and Hum is an album I favor listening to, although it’s second to The Joshua Tree among my U2 album’s of choice. I found myself streaming and humming “Desire” today, so I thought I’d spilled it out to others. The song’s lyrics touches on how greed and love can become entangled, and reminds me of how often the desire to be wanted confuses the need to be love and be loved. It’s a fever, an addiction, a promise, and a reward.
U2 is hot and cold for me. I really enjoy The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum albums, but I was less enthused about others. This song, “Mysterious Ways” from Achtung, Baby, is my favorite track from that album. I like the mystic romantic aspects the lyrics present, and the sharp guitar hook juxtaposed against the beat and bass line. It’s a song that I crank up, and one that I sing to my cats. I sing it to myself, too, as I contemplate the world and my writing. Talk about mysterious ways.
From out of the dreams came some streams, and from the streams came some songs….
This one grew more forcefully shaped and remembered as the lyrics echoed through memories’ canyons and flew over plains of time.
I…I will begin again
I…I will begin again
Sometimes, when events took me down, I took strength from music, and lyrics like these. I take strength wherever, however I find it, as it seems like life drains my strength so quickly. It’s good to remember that at the rate that our bodies replace our cells, we’re always being reborn.
“This is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. We’re stealing it back.”
I was thirteen in 1969. The Tate-LaBianca murders exploded over the news. I remember newspaper headlines, photographs and television news coverage of the Manson Family actions and the subsequent investigations as clearly as I remember the assassinations of RFK, JFK and MLK, the Watts riots, or the Apollo moon landing. Helter Skelter became the symbol of the murders because the words were written in blood at the scene. The murders became books and movies under the name ‘Helter Skelter’. It wasn’t an accident. Charles Manson believed and taught the Beatles’ ‘White Album’, including ‘Helter Kelter’, contained coded messages for him and his followers.
If you can escape the murderous connection, the lyrics are good to sing as you’re walking around:
When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
And I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
And I get to the bottom and I see you again
The song, written by Paul McCartney, would never be heard the same for many of us. Here is U2, trying to change it back for us in 1988.
Michael Seidel, writer 