Letting Go

I'm sitting here in Central Florida on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of February. Outside, it could not be more beautiful, it's balmy, the air is full of sunshine and breezes. The azaleas are blooming and the palm trees are as a high as an elephant's eye...It's the kind of weather Jimmy Buffet conjures up when he's 'wasting away in Margaritaville' or eating his 'cheeseburgers in paradise'. It's so damn perfect, it makes you blink.

And yet, I'm sitting inside here, and I'm trying to come to grips with the past. Trying to let go.

Something as seemingly innocuous as getting new carpets and I'm knee deep in a blue funk. Allow me to expound a bit. My current floor coverings would not look out of place in Bob and Emily's all mod-cons Chicago apartment from Season One of 'The Bob Newhart Show', we NEED new carpet. It's time, heck, it was time 20 years ago!

But new carpets mean emptying the closets.  Emptying bureaus, drawers...full of photos, books, old clothes, hmmm...a concert program that shows I saw Dwight Yoakam in 1993, 'I saw Dwight Yoakam?' In short my entire life.  And just like my life, it's overcrowded with memories.

Just as am I starting to obsess about becoming next week's subject of a whole new episode of Hoarders, it hits me hard. Grief. Once again, it jumps up and well, there's no other way to put it, bitch slaps me in the face. I find a photograph of me, and my grandparents and Uncle Bob.

Uncle Bob died in December. Less the 48 hours later, my Grandma K. died.  It's a lot to absorb in such a small amount of time. You see, Uncle Bob was a big part of my life, he was the tangible link to my past. A great guy, you'd of liked him. Everybody did. He never met a stranger. You know those Saturday Night Car Shows, where folks drive their old Fords and Chevys' to Steak and Shake and everybody stands around and gawks? Well, there's always that old guy who speaks fluent Mopar, that old guy was probably my Uncle Bob. You want to know about stock colors, options, hemis, or mpg, he's your man.  He would reserve space in a fleabag of a motel a year in advance for Labor Day Car Shows as his summer vacation. That was my Uncle Bob, he never met an engine he didn't like. He was Wayne Carini on a budget.

He was the guy who told me that it really was like 'Happy Days' in the old days, a born racounteur who loved to talk about the good old days. 'Life really was that good,' he was forever telling me. A walking contradiction, a guy who stayed so locked in the past that he had his whole Florida mobile home decked out in 50's era photos with a jukebox and diner style napkins and straws on his 50's art-deco table, yet he loved the Clash, was a devotee of Craigslist and Ebay, and even had a Facebook account, I'm told.

I guess we have that in common Uncle Bob and I, that love of that past. The thing that makes it so hard to let go. You're afraid of losing the memories, because you feel you might forget the person or maybe who you are.

So I wrote this today sending it out into cyberspace, so I can let it go and the world will know he was here and I won't have to hoard some more junk I don't need so that I don't forget. 

I like to think he would like that. On this glorious Florida day he would have loved, probably at some car show or antique fair somewhere, I'm memoralizing him so I can let go.

Musical Identity Crisis

I admit it, I'm a bit stuck in the past. It's been mentioned to me. And sometimes in less than kind phrases, a few come to mind, 'prematurely middle-aged', 'you, you were born old and you're gonna die old', (this salvo was lobbed at me by my younger sister in the midst of a fight over, if I'm not mistaken, possession of the CD player) and the ever-popular, if predictable, 'you live too much in the past'.

In answer to my critics, I was perusing an article today that listed current Grammy nominees and predictions for the winners in each category and as opposed to the Oscar Nominees which with the sounds of tumbleweeds and crickets in my head I blanked on every movie and several of the actors. Conversely, I knew many, if not nearly all of the nominees for this years Grammy's.

There is the utterly divine chanteuse, Adele, which, well...words fail me to describe her stellar vocals that have an undercurrent of pathos and pain that hasn't been seen since possibly Janis Joplin. Who, distressingly, I've never liked. Joplins' singing always made me feel sort of itchy and uncomfortable, it was nails on a chalkboard, sandpaper, cat's tongues. It made me think of rashy sore throats.  In country there is the refreshingly natural vocal band 'The Band Perry' two brothers Neil, Reid and their hit-song writing lead singer sister Kimberly. Their music is easy on the ears, romantic, imaginative and intelligent. There's the funky, 'Foster the People' with their 'Pumped Up Kicks' which I liked until I really listened to the lyrics...What can I say except, songs about kids with homicidical tendencies...well they just tend to leave me depressed! Foo Fighters, Cee Lo, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, Bon Iver, yes know em' all. Ah...Coldplay. New Album, Mylo Xyolo. I've been listening to it on repeat. The funky electronica 'Princess of China' and 'Paradise'.  Here's the thing about Coldplay, I always love their new album until, after about 50 or so compulsive listens when I realise that it's just a lot of driving piano, ambient yelling or possibly ambient moaning, 'Whoa oh oh, Whoa oh oh's' with backing tracks of blissed-out studio-engineered electronica. It's sort of the equivalent of Lucasfilm when they CGI'd the living daylights out of the three Star Wars Prequels. Then I begin to curse the day when album producer Brian Eno synthesized his first track and went to Tibet to sample monks chanting. I begin to wish for the days when he donned feather boas, played keyboards for Roxy and kept his mouth shut. When he left the art schoolesque creative overdosing to Bryan Ferry.

For me, modern 21st century music is a lot like the heady feelings you get when you start dating someone. At first, you are spellbound, you hang on their every word, you get butterflies in your stomach when you first see them, a sort of bilious nausea if you will. It's very much like having the flu, the lovesick feeling. Then fast forward a few months and you begin to see the cracks, the fact that he chews with his mouth open, how he no longer rushes to get doors for you, how she dominates the conversation with constant mentions of the word 'I', how tiresome her friends' opinions have become. Has he/she changed really? No, it's just that the newness has worn off, the proverbial gilt off the gingerbread. Same with music, did the arrangements really change? Maybe it's just that the cracks are beginning to show.

I went to my favorite $5.00 sub-touting restaurant this evening to pick up a footlong and as I waited at a traffic light, Hall and Oates', 1982 smash, 'I Can't Go For That' came on the car stereo and immediately I was struck at the lushness of the arrangement, at Darryl Halls's soaring vocals, how utterly and unapologetically soulful. Just how damn good it still is 30 years later. For all of the advances in music technology, digitial remastering, etc., you can't beat the sheer musicianship of my perennial favorites, Rush. And I have to agree wholeheartedly with my blogging Yoda, Mr. 'Bone' that Gordon Lightfoot is a revelation in terms of storytelling, like a balladeer of old. 

As for me, yeah I'll keep some of the new on my MP3, Adele, The Band Perry, maybe some Gaga for when I need pumping up for exercise. I'll sigh and keep the Coldplay for the moments of self-loathing. But if some kind of worldwide data crunch occurs and I'm suddenly forced to choose, I'm keeping the Prince, keeping the Michael Jackson (Sh'amone, hee, hee), keeping the Rush, the Billy Joel. I'm keeping the Lightfoot, the Genesis and I'm definitely keeping the Hall and Oates. Keeping the soundtrack to my youth.

So yeah, it's possible I live too much in the past. But there again, it's possible that as with any identity crisis, the answer is usually found in the past.

I'd go on about this, but Coldplay's on again and I've only reached about 28 listens...

Gen X Retro Flashback: The Other Ones- "Holiday"

Here's a really cheesy blast from the past...I don't know what it is...but this is one of those songs that makes me immediately think of the 1980's....

The Family Communication Hub

I have a small confession to make, one which will pretty much brand me as a hypocrite.

I am now the owner of... a smartphone. A gen-u-wine, android-powered piece of evil that is supposed to make me hipper, brighter, tech-savvy and have whiter teeth. Ok, I threw that last one in.

I know in my first piece some months back, I branded myself as a reactionary and expressed contempt for these objects. I maintain my contempt, but the sad fact is, you almost can't get just a 'regular cell phone' today and my cell phone company wanted to charge me MORE for their non-Android phones, the one I could find at all. Ok, the conspiracy theorist in me, could go on about this for...well, how much time have you got? But, the truth is...like social media; I guess this is is just the way things are.

My first stirrings that I wasn't exactly a technophile came about two Christmases ago, when my niece, Persephone (names have been changed to protect the innocent) seeing my car pull in the driveway as I dutifully dragged myself to Christmas dinner, came running over to me in full shriek. Immediately, Norman Rockwell-esque images flooded my mind, and I was all warm inside, "My little niece...can't wait to see her Auntie!" As I opened the car door, a very different child confronted me, "Auntie, I got DS!". Neophyte that I am, and missing the oh-so-critical 'a'; I took a few steps back, starting to say, "I'm sorry you don't feel well, and I'm sure Mommy and Daddy will take you to the doctor and he'll make it all better..." when she thrusts this notebook-like object under my nose. "Look Auntie!", she says grasping a stylus in her hand like a secretary about to take dictation, "It's got games, I can go on the internet, see all my friends..." I'm thinking, 'she's 7, I mean, it's not like she needs the internet to send critical work emails, or to liaise with the home office.'
Which was nearly my reaction a few months later when she was given a laptop computer.  To put it in perspective, I was in my LATE 30's when I got my FIRST personal laptop computer.

So to put it mildly, I am a late bloomer when it comes to technology.

After my new device came, I took myself down to the store to have all of my pictures and contacts moved from my old and apparently so low-tech that the rep on the phone nearly laughed out loud when I gave him my model and serial numbers SIM card to my new more hipper and fashion-forward SIM. As part of the service, the cellular representative, who like all of the people in my life these days, probably was born the week that Family Ties had it's farewell episode, proceeded to give me a crash-course in all the things my 'droid could apparently do. It was a lot like when fast talker John Moschitta, Jr. aka 'The Micro Machine Man' used to run down all of the attributes of those amazing little shape-shifting toys in the space of a minute and a half or the weird unintelligible words of the auctioneer hawking cars at the Barrett-Jackson Auto Auction. That is, if Moschitta, Jr. or the auction-man also happened to speak very quickly in Greek, Swahili or Russian. "Okay folks, here you have your apps, your apps, swype, give me swype and you have your net, give me net, I say net access, net access, pinch it, pinch it and it gets smaller, smaller I say, give me smaller, spread your fingers, I say spread em, and it gets larger...give me larger"

As he droned on...I zoned out. My mind drifted to a happier place, before 'droids, I-Pods, MP3's, Tablet PC's, laptops, etc. I thought affectionately back to the days when my Mom carried a cell-phone the size of a masonary brick, it's long black plastic antenna protruding through the zipper of her purse. I thought back to my father's car which was equipped with an equally brick-like phone in a cradle housed in the console next to the driver's seat, the hands' free option that so dazzled my friends, press one button, 'beeeepp' connect with the microphone crouched in the window corner and he would transact business all the way to our school, a long wire-like antenna protruding from the roof of the car.

Back when the family communication hub consisted of a phone with a looonnng extension cord that let you walk all the way from the breakfast nook to the dining room and if you were nimble and determined enough to the living room sofa where you could sit down for an intimate conversation heard only by...well...everyone in the living room or the bedroom beyond. I used to love to wind myself in the cord and see how many revolutions it took to get free again. I think my record was 9. With a cell-phone you're too free and ambulatory, consequently you miss things. If I hadn't been wound up in the cord and trapped in the kitchen; I'd have missed the moment when our crazy, clumsy cat BJ while in the midst of a fight with another cat, missed his footing, tripped and flipped himself into the family swimming pool.

As for texting, in the 1990's with a houseful of people coming and going at different times, texting was a spot on the breakfast nook where a sheaf of scratch paper fashioned from cut-up backs of those pesky Val-Pak coupons and a chewed-up pencil resided. It was there you got all you needed to know, "We've gone to bed, please don't unplug the coffee maker, we're going out early in the morning, see you when we get back. Love, Mom". Important information like, "Jessie's staying over night, so you're sleeping on the couch, try not to wake the girls!" Or chores, "On your way home from school, could you please pick up a veggie for supper, cauliflower would be good or maybe green beans, NO LIMA BEANS, your sisters won't eat them!"

Yep, the good old reliable Family Communication Hub...for my money you can keep the droid...It'll never beat a coil-y phone cord and a chewed up pencil!

Regrets...I've had a few

I'm in a pensive frame of mind today.

Today I'm not so much thinking about the clash of generations or generational differences but of my own personal losses.

Time does indeed make fools of us all. Thanks to social media like Facebook, Twitter, etc we get to relive those regrets on a daily basis in some cases.

Facebook I've decided, can on any given day, be both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing in that it keeps me up to date on the people that I truly care about. In an instant, I know that my sister/aunt/friend had a 'Super time at Walt Disney World' or at least as good a time as one can have paying $8.00 for a Coke after dropping (according to my most recent stats) $90.53 (can that be right!??) a head to be hurled through the air, plummeted, turned sideways, jolted, and just plain scared out of their wits on rides that make you wish you were dead! But at least, thanks to Facebook, I know that they at least loved/liked/survived the experience. Also, when next month they are 'worried about making the mortgage', I for one, know why!

No one can doubt the truly all-encompassing changes that social media has wrought on our lives. For once, I have the upper hand over my mother when we gently gossip about the family and what's going on in so-and-so's life. I've been there, seen the pictures, and bought the t-shirt.  I'm able to correct her and say that "Actually Aunt Louisa and Uncle Ted are not going to Las Vegas for their vacation, they've decided to go to Branson instead!"

On the other hand though, the dark little secret of Facebook is that once you've delved in, you are sucked into a vortex that inevitably leads you back to your past. 'Friending' this person leads to that friend who leads to this friend and so forth...you get the idea. Some friends it leads you to are just as you remember them and their life has taken a pretty predictable path, some you look at and go, "Wow, next to this guy/that girl, my life looks pretty great!"

But then, you look at the really close friends and you wonder, 'should I have taken a different path?'
When you are a 30-something X'er, looking at your other 30-something X'ers, sometimes you sit back and catch your breath and think back to the simpler times. Before they had kids, and dance lessons and soccer games to go to. When you were a real person to them, not just a name on their speed dial or Facebook Friends' list. You look at the photos of their weddings, their kids as infants, Christmases, Easter, the trip to that amusement park, that field trip and realise that the pics of you dancing with your colleagues at the office Christmas Party after you've had a little too much wine seem a bit hollow in comparison. A little too 'Bridget Jones' for comfort.

Granted, sometimes these maudlin reflections are the result of a few too many hours listening to "Now That's What I Call the 80's" Volume(s) I, II, III, too many awkward dates, too many failed relationships. Nights where you sit and reflect on 'the one who got away'. And Facebook is there to remind you of that as well. You see the one(s) who got away. Sometimes you even 'friend' them. The exquisite torture of seeing them and their spouse, children and how 'happy they are at Disney World'.

Then there is always the 'one', the incomparable, who you sit back and voyueristically marvel at, and wonder how you let someone as fantastically talented, humane, decent, moral and kind just slip through your fingers.

Yes, even in your worst hour, Facebook is there for you.
And yet... in the space of a few hours, I'm sure I'll log in again for just a little more torment...