Say What Now?

The other night I heard my son humming a little tune under his breath that was pretty familiar.  At first I figured it must be my imagination, then he started singing the words.

“I see a red door and I want to paint it black … .”

“Excuse me?!  How do you know that song?” I asked him.

“Let me guess, it’s one you already know.” 

“Uh, yeah, it must have come out when I was about 2, so yes, you could say I already know it, Mr Smartypants.  Let me show you.”

So I did a quick YouTube search and then played the found video for him, complete in all its black and white glory.

My son watched it with me.  “He dances pretty weird, it’s kinda funny,” was pretty much all he found to say about it.

“Yeah, that’s what drugs will do to you,” said I.  “You should see him do his chicken dance, maybe I’ll find a video of that and show it to you one of these days.  Drugs are bad.”  As a parent, you have to take the teachable moments where you find them.

“So tell me,” I asked, “How did you come across that song?  It shouldn’t be on your radar at all.”

He pointed me to the video where he heard it.  Sonic.  A silly Sonic the Hedgehog video.  Who knew?

Wednesday Winter

I don’t actually know how many days it is until Spring, and around here, it doesn’t really matter what the calendar says.  Have you seen the pictures I’ve posted taken on the 1st day of Spring?  There’s a reason I call it “Sprinter.”  While we had a fantastic New Years Eve, weather wise for us, now it’s in the single digits tonight, likely to stay that way the next few nights to come at least, and that means that whatever the thermometer is, it’s really colder because we have that stupid thing called “wind chill,” which is what the air really feels like.

I used to have a friend in high school who often wistfully said, “Oh, I hope it’s a white Christmas this year.”  Yeah, she needed a good smackin’!  I didn’t even know what a “White Christmas” was, other than a song, until I was in my teens.  Once I saw it, I realized that snow belongs in only 3 places – snow globes, postcards and Lake Tahoe. 

Ahhhh, okay!  I got my annual snow-b#tch out of my system.  😀

We watched these awesome DVD’s I got at the library – a set of clips from the Ed Sullivan show.  Remember that?  It was all music clips, so really, almost like MTV before there was MTV.  I watched the years from ‘65-‘70 and boy did it bring back some memories!  I was cracking up at Herman’s Hermits – “2nd verse, same as the 1st!” and they way they bopped around on stage.  They really should have bottled all that energy!  So much music from when I was a tiny thing, with older teen siblings who listened to the rock stations of the day.  I remember seeing the album for the Chambers Brothers and wondering how they could all be brothers.  “How did all those black men get a white brother?” I asked my sister.  I think she told me he was adopted. 

I had to look up Mama Cass after seeing the Mamas and Papas, to find out just when she died.  She didn’t really die from eating a ham sandwich.  I knew that, you knew that, but can you believe that rumor still persists?  The Jackson 5, the Supremes, Tom Jones – oh my goodness, I had “Delilah” going through my head all the next day!  LOL 

It was so much fun walking down memory lane.  I know if I ever get the money, I’m going to be a sucker for those Time-Life video things that are like 986 disk sets of “all your favorite music!”

 

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It is well

Have you ever had one of those moments where someone says something offhand, that essentially accuses you of being a liar, that something you went through, suffered from, never really happened? 

I just had such a moment.  It wasn’t directed at me personally or to me in any way; it was just an off-the-cuff comment I saw on another blog directed to someone I know, but the way it read implied – initially – that what I went through, what I lost, the devastation and life-altering events I went through, didn’t happen like it did.  My knee-jerk response to that is visceral and … feral.  It’s the kind of feeling that makes me shoot first and probably not ask questions later.  Part of the reason for my vehemence, I suppose, is due in part to the accusations I and Darc suffered at the time of the events from people who were supposed to be supportive.  It’s like saying reality, my reality, isn’t real. 

Turns out the comment made was not intended as it came across, which was a huge relief.  The comment wasn’t a denial, it was sarcasm – but type of expression is hard to get through in text.  Still, I’m glad it was clarified.

Which brings me to what I was initially going to blog about, and believe me, the irony doesn’t escape me.

This should probably be posted over at my faith blog but, what the heck, I’ll just post it here.  I haven’t posted over there for a long time anyway.  For any who may read this who don’t like the Christian stuff, you should probably stop reading now.  You’ve been warned!  😉

For a long time now, almost a year, something strange has been happening to me.  As I mentioned above, there were some painful events in our life that were pretty devastating.  It left me with a huge hole in my faith.  I clung to it, but it was the kind of desperation that knew I had to cling to it or die.  My faith in Christ has always been a part of me, and I felt I had a very close and personal relationship with Him.  But then these things happened, and it felt like when I needed Him most, He wasn’t there.  I can only describe it as akin to losing your identity, or like Wil E. Coyote – you know, finding yourself suspended in mid-air and looking down.  Whatever had been holding me up, my ground, was gone.  Why would God allow these things to happen to me?  Isn’t that always the 1st thing we ask?  We’re so quick to blame, so slow to thank for the good things.  Anyway, I struggled for a long time, years actually, in this desert of what my faith had been.  So many moments of panic, fear and always silence on the other end.  I felt like God had abandoned me.  It was a pretty dark, and very long, time.

And then one day last fall – I remember it so clearly – walking around the grocery store and feeling almost drunk.  That undercurrent of fear that had defined every moment of every day for so long was gone.  Nothing was different, there were still cans of peaches on the shelves, but I was changed.  I remember Darc asked me if I was okay and all I could say was, “I’m fine!” and smile at him.  Which is no clue to him because I always say I’m fine, no matter what.  Just ask him!  We’d been talking about the election coming up and I said, “Oh, we’ll lose … but that’s okay, it’ll be fine, no worries.”  He looked at me like I was insane, as I recall.  I was right, we lost, but I’m still not worried.  And that’s the thing – I should be worried about so many things right now (as some of you are aware), I should be in a nail-biting frenzy of panic, but I can’t find it within me to worry or be afraid.  That feeling of peace and serenity that I have no explanation for, is still with me – even when I go through things that upset and frustrate me.  It’s like a super thick mattress pad, or like being wrapped in the coziest quilt.  My Comforter has returned to me in ways that I’ve never experienced before.  I can hear Him whisper words of encouragement and hope.  I can feel His presence.  I thought, at first, that it was a momentary thing, that it would fade and go away – but it’s been constant for nearly a year.  I can’t explain it and I don’t want to – there is no “why?” here, there is only gratefulness.  And amazement that despite all the loss and agony and sorrow, there are still tears of joy.

There’s a hymn that popped into my mind when I started feeling these things last year.  I went to YouTube to see if I could find it, and I discovered the circumstances of the man who wrote it.  It’s pretty astounding.  And the words, oh the words!  It is well, it is well, with my soul!

It Is Well With My Soul

Modern day time travel

Take a trip down memory lane with me, won’t you?  Darc and I stayed up the other night having giggle fits over songs from  our childhood.  Yes, the grand ol’ ‘70’s.  :)  I cracked up over Darc’s confession that he didn’t know the singer from the band Wild Cherry was white – you know, the “Play That Funky Music White Boy” song.  He didn’t watch Midnight Special like I did so he missed that one.  There was one song, “Love Rollercoaster,” that was huge because the rumor going around was that the screams in the song were “accidently captured” and were actually “the screams of a girl being murdered in the next studio.”  I kid you not!  The big thing was to keep calling radio stations and ask them to play it again, so you could hear the poor girl’s dying cries.  Yeah, file that one under urban legends of the ‘70’s! 

Dreams was a big one, as was Go Your Own Way, both by Fleetwood Mac.  I confess I was a little miffed that Dreams won the #1 spot of the top 100 songs of the year on my local radio station, beating out the Bay City Rollers Saturday Night.  Just please don’t tell anyone!  I was only 12!  Which reminds me; remember You Light Up My Life?  Did you see the movie??  Yeah, me too.  I remember my friends and I sitting in the theater wondering how Didi Conn managed to belt out that song with her breathy little voice.  We didn’t quite get the concept of “voice over-dubbing.”  Yep, she was also Frenchie in Grease. 

How did this conversation get started, you ask?  Well, when I came out of the smoking room, Darc asked, “Were you whistling in there?”
”Umm, yeah, sorry … I was listening to my iPod.”
”What in the world were you listening to?”
”I was Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay.”

I think, for me, that is one of the defining songs of my childhood.  I’ve been on those docks, lived not terribly far from them, and I can see them when I close my eyes while listening to this song.  I can smell the salty air and see the sea lions playing.  I can feel the sand in my toes and the cold water washing over my feet.  Dock Of The Bay was played often on the radio station I listened to, and learning how to whistle like Otis Redding was considered an accomplishment.  :)  This song isn’t simply a song I listen to, it’s a place I go. 

This video – Top 30 Best rock songs of the 70’s – has a nice compilation of some 70’s songs – I’m sure it’ll bring back some memories.  😀

You’re So Real

For the last few days I’ve had this song running around in my head.  Not like, you know, like when an annoying jingle gets stuck in your head but more like, I can’t seem to stop thinking about this, almost like there’s something there I’m supposed to figure out.  (Well, I know what I mean anyway!)  These lines in particular:

Run this round in your head
Like you don’t know what’s on the inside
You don’t know me too well
You ain’t seen my bad side
Shame on me, shame on the things that I be
If you could complicate me
If you could get inside me

I thought if I ignored it, it’d just go away like most other things that pass through my brain, but no, it’s stuck.  So I thought if I listened to the song it’d go away, but no, now it’s in there even stronger.  I confess, while other people may do the air guitar thing, I play the air drums.  Not where anyone can see me, Lord no!  That’s what bathrooms are for! 

Maybe by the 50th or 60th time I listen to it, I’ll figure out why I can’t get it out of my head.  Maybe.  Maybe it’s one of those things that’s so right in front of my face I can’t see it.  If anything jumps out at you, let me know!

In the meantime, you can enjoy it too!

~~Ness~~ 

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8swSZcc6Gw)

Yes I am
I hope you think you beat me
Hope I start talking crazy
Before you understand me
Are we through
You think that I’m beneath you
But you like the things that I do
Wrap em up and take em with you
I’m alright
Hope I can sleep for one night
If not to cool my insides
Maybe to calm my backside
Rain on me
I got a weakness in me
I think that weakness feeds me
I don’t think you think you need me
Sunshine, you’re the best time
I ever, ever had
But I think I made you feel bad
A black fly on your necktie
Time after time
[Chorus]
But when the sun starts sinking
On your beautiful soul
Make you cry, cry baby
Make you feel so cold
Don’t you know it’s alright
Sometimes you just got to show how you feel
Cause that’s you baby
Hell, you’re so real
Run this round in your head
Like you don’t know what’s on the inside
You don’t know me too well
You ain’t seen my bad side
Shame on me, shame on the things that I be
If you could complicate me
If you could get inside me
Sometimes, you’re the best time
I’ve ever, ever known
A pretty girl with a wicked smile on
But I’ve cried for the last time
Something just don’t feel right
[Chorus]
But when the sun starts sinking
On your beautiful soul
Make you cry, cry baby
Make you feel so cold
Don’t you know it’s alright
Sometimes you just got to show how you feel
Cause that’s you baby
Hell, you’re so real
You always know just who you are
You never needed someone else
To realize yourself
[Chorus]
How when the sun starts sinking
On your beautiful soul
Make you cry, cry baby
Make you feel so cold
Don’t you know it’s alright
Sometimes you just got to show how you feel
Cause that’s you baby
Hell, you’re so real
Yeah baby, you’re so real
Yeah baby, you’re so real
So real, so real
Oh god, yeah
Yeah, yeah

I’ve Been Thinking

You know how sometimes you get a song stuck in your head and you just have to hear it or it drives you crazy?  Well, that’s where I am right now.  The song, you ask?  Easy.  It’s called, “I’ve Been Thinking” by a band called Player.  They were big back in the ‘70’s and did at least one little tune you might recall … Baby Come Back.  In my search – futile search – for the song I wanted I stumbled on the band’s website and the YouTube site of one of the members.  They have some videos up now and boy, it’s a trip down memory lane.  I remember being a young girl, listening to my music with my big old clunky headphones on so I wouldn’t bother anyone else in the house.  I could always tell when my mother was coming because my cat would look at the door.  Good kitteh, he always gave me enough time to whip off my headphones before my mother called through the door, “Is that you making all that racket up here?  I hear lots of thumping.”  I always placed the blame for my rock-star-wannabe dancing thumps on my step-brother.  And that’s the ONLY thing he was good for. 

While I didn’t find the song I was looking for, I did find a few others.  So here I am, 30 years later, still with my headphones on only they’re not so big and clunky now, and I’m not dancing around the room quite so much, the music still makes me smile.  Good stuff stands the test of time, and Player was one of the good ones.  Maybe they have some Player CD’s at the library I can copy! 

Here’s one you might like – I think even my Super-Chipper Girl would like this one!  🙂

Musings

I went to bed this morning (yes, this morning) feeling like I’d missed my calling in life.  I’ve been addicted to political blogs lately – haven’t you? – and I had that sinking feeling that I should have been a lawyer or politician.  I’m probably too thin-skinned to be a politician, but maybe a lawyer would have been a good choice.  I think I’d have loved being a prosecutor for the DA’s office or something.  But I woke up with Someone Saved My Life Tonight buzzing through my brain.  I had to chuckle.  Perhaps it’s a good thing I didn’t end up in law or politics.  Then I started recalling the other songs from Elton John’s Captain Fantastic album.  Songs like Bitter Fingers, Better Off Dead, and Writing.  As a kid, I loved Elton John.  And I still think that the team of Elton John and Bernie Taupin was musical brilliance.  I was just too young at the time to appreciate it.  What’s really ironic is the dichotomy between my political beliefs and my musical tastes.  For sure neither one shaped the other!  And it kind of annoys me when people might assume me to be a Democrat because I love Aerosmith, who endorsed Ted Kennedy, or that I must listen to Gospel or Country because I’m a hard core Republican.  And I have no clue how I got from politics to Elton John during my sleep, but I did.  Some things just defy explanation, and all you can do is Yell Help.  :D 

©DarcsFalcon