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classic rock
February 28, 2005
my eyes twitch. the writing jumps, and i have to back away from the page. the latest development in the aging process.
days, months, years are meaningless, but time persists, its progress undeniable.
someone broke the satellite radio receiver here at halcyon, so the stereo is on z102. it was ez102 in my childhood, as in e-z listening, the bane of my existence, the cruelest of psychological assaults my parents subjected me to. i remember the day the format changed to classic rock, how my parents writhed in agony. i loved it. i spent career day there in the booth my senior year, on the day boston's new album, "third stage" was released.
time. so much of it. sometimes, it doesn't seem so linear, as if all the points in my life coexist here. i feel like i can see so clearly, maybe step into that day in world history in 6th grade - i see the desks, the faces; that day in football practice in 8th grade - yeah, i can feel the grass under my cleats, the crackle of pads under contact; the day running around the apartment with my dad, my father, playing star trek, back when i actually wanted to be mr. spock rather than captain kirk. maybe i just loved my dad enough that i knew he should be captain kirk.
the moody blues, "nights in white satin". i'm in a cotton orvis shirt my parents gave me. it's too big, and the nice cotton is a bit stiff, like something a car salesman would wear. pleated pants. a sheep in wolf's clothing.
i feel time sliding by. not so much tonight - i've slowed it to a crawl with the help of beer and friends and music. there's much time to go, but as much already past, so many forks in the road so far behind me now, my field of vision, of possiblity, seeming to narrow daily as i accelerate into middle-age, into age, into the hanging-on years, into oblivion.
pink floyd. appropriately, "time". but all this i feel is only a little bit about time. it's more about the quality of the time. i'm making headway, certainly, and today is just a speedbump, as i let myself get stressed about money and work. it's more about what i feel i miss at this point in my life.
"jack and diane". i'm back at blake's birthday party, 7th grade, at his house, the white supermodern architecture. we're all on the patio under the house, the pool nearby, the late summer night reasonably cool.
that was the first night i saw the miraculous new thing, "mtv." they were playing a dire straits concert. later, it would be the first place i saw a porno movie - "behind the green door."
maybe this is enough for a life, the wonderful, awful, beautiful persistence of memory. to sit here and feel procul harum sing "a whiter shade of pale." to lose yourself in a friendly mosh pit at an eve's plum show (anyone remember them?). to remember suzanne teaching me about 9/8 time, tapping it out on my leg at the sting concert. tearing up at the peter gabriel concert, he at attention in his long somber black coat, on a red stage, singing "biko," weeks before i would begin law school, and the slow hemorraghing of my soul. hearing ian moore at a small accoustic show at tower records, before folks recognized, hearing true soul ring out of his voice and his guitar, hearing new hope after stevie ray died, after stevie wonder became more a legend than a fresh source of inspiration.
there are more moments, certainly, not connected with music, some of them deafening, many of them quiet, like the moment i looked in her eyes and saw and knew the same love there that i felt. but music is for me the reminder. i'm drunk and i know it. i know that there is more left, more moments loud and soft, maybe, maybe, maybe more love like the one i once knew, and always, always, always, more music to remember it all by.
Posted by Rob at February 28, 2005 11:21 PM