Take you far from this place and time

Today in Soft Rock Saved Me:

In what feels like the 99th hour today and yesterday of wrangling the mundane and the wild mind, this came on SiriusXM and suddenly I floated away to a white coastal house ringed by a wide porch, palms spiking and lazy trees swaying around it, the air heavy and sweet. And I look down and see my tan chest and shoulders under a white cargo top...no, a boatneck, filmy...oh, hell, it doesn't matter because I am finally in a moment that makes all the bland and monkey-minded time worthwhile, I have no worries, I have no cares, I don't have to check email, any email, I can feel the sun.

This mirage is all I have since the sun won't be back for another 120 days, really...

We make it harder than it has to be

Wow, this isn't as old as I thought it was. Certainly this was heard in the backseat of the car, flying down a country road--but no, that was this one, similarly a delicious R&B groove. No, this was heard when I was in fifth grade, and things were getting harder. I flunked a science test during the third or fourth week of school because, up to that point, I hadn't needed to study, do homework, think about school once I was home with Nancy Drew and Barbie and Mork and Mindy and the Bosom Buddies. What the hell? I dimly remember a big red number below 70 scrawled at the top of the test by Mr. Enoch, who we inexplicably gave a ridiculous and very late 20th century small-minded nickname involving moles (predating Austin Powers by two decades). The feel-good fourth grade was over. Nothing but homework and headaches while I strained to see the blackboard all year and then, finally, in May of fifth grade, glasses. 

Maybe this gave me short-term nostalgia for a few years earlier, when life was easier. 

Just follow your eyes.

I can't stop listening to



Maybe because it's fall now, and trees are front and center, dying gorgeously. Though this sounds like the stark ones of November, blotting a pale sky, their former glorious dressing rotting and crunching underfoot.

This was the peak of the epic show I saw in lush, pre-solstic summer.

Making the life that I had seem suddenly shiny and new

We all want someone or something to appear in life and make every path forward and back clear to us.

I play to win.

Applicable every day, to everything.

Still, every day, I play to win.

Just remember in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows

As a child, this song moved me.

Now, in the winters, I think of the seeds and bulbs sleeping.

Maybe it's because of this song.

Pointless Radio Reviews: Cool Change

I decided to review what’s playing on retro pop radio. Because somebody had to. 

“Cool Change,” Little River Band. 1980.

The albatross and the whales, they are my brothers. ‘Nuff said. 

 

Random Play: Never thought I'd fall again so easily

Some schmaltz from 1980 arises as soon as I turn on the radio this morning--and its long-forgotten provenance that I must've osmosed as a child who turned on the radio some morning then.



THEN you play "Starship Troopers" for me, Zenith? Sister Bluebird, look what you've done to me.