Fooled by now, we mystify the past

Some might think (or just the animal in my head does) that every opportunity to make something outta this blog and its/my online, er, presence, was missed, from the first blog revolution to being deemed "comedy cognoscenti" by all the Twits to doing I-don't-know-what-the-hell on TickTock or whatever, has been missed.

Right. Well, there isn't an audience for soft-rock treatises and record player reminisces, with a side of trips to back to Turfland Mall and Landsdowne pool

But this is the way I am trying to tell you (you, or just the animal in my head) that I am am alive, I am living. I know all the moments these songs vibrated the chain of tiny bones in my ears. I remember them all. I remember this one (Clybourn Avenue, rain), this one (San Diego County), here (outside of North/Clybourn Red line), and here (moving and moving on). 

It all happened. It all happens, every time. 

Here is when my bike ride to the lake would time out exactly for me to fly down the hill at the northern end of Lincoln Memorial with this song on the tape player. The water-sky line, the sun, the wind, the speed, the water on the rocks, cars climbing toward Kenwood Avenue, all of it, mine and mine forever. 

Spring is here again.

This is a recycled post. This date comes up every year. Someone I never knew but who loomed over a short but significant time of my life end it on this day. I was sitting at a desk, as I have, ad infinitum, when I found out from my older-but-not-that-much-that-he-didn't-know-Nirvana boss that, yep, that was it. Or someone called me, because that's how you found out anything then, someone made a real effort of physical movement to a phone or your location to utter words to tell you. I guess someone could have mailed me a letter, but that's even more work, for chrissakes. 

What I would like to repeat is this song, a perfect marriage of sound and meaning, and what I said 9 years ago about it:

I like Kurt most of all because he was a keen observer of human behavior, and I think that skill is simply visceral in this song. 

Where does it go from here?

Oh, how many times did I play this on the Y-Not II jukebox? When I discovered it? I wish I could remember that first time I saw it spin past, and what number it was? The juke at the Y-Not looked like...? Was it the rounded dome or the broad table style box? There were stick-up buttons, the kind that satisfy when pushed because they're going in about half an inch. 

What was I even doing there? Because it's what I did, what you did when you were 24, 25 years old and still exploring the contours of freedom since you were a teenager only less than a decade before? A lot of young adults accomplish a lot in those years. I remember aching with the understanding that I wasn't doing that--that accomplishing (something). Not raising hell, either. In the middle, having fun. 

If what exists from that time is not a credit to my name but a memory of a feeling stitched across time by music, I'm okay with that. You were doing something all along. Pushing buttons that still satisfy.

Remember how the stars stole the night away?

Whenever I hear it, I always remember how this felt. 

But it's really not about nostalgia. It's an aid to help you climb to a peak of happiness, way up in the blue sky, every -- single -- time   it plays.

YOW!