My Brighter Dark Side

I have to admit that I'm suspicious of anyone who has never considered taking his or her own life. I don't consider myself a morbid guy. I'm not depressed, although, of course, I have my "glass half empty" periods.

If there was any kind of chance in my shaky belief system of reuniting with the folks that I have loved and lost, or any of my departed four legged friends, I would take the bus outta' here today.

We all live with memories that we call ghosts. Sometimes, angels.

There's a void that we call loneliness that can only be filled with new memories. Here's to the lonely. Here's to new memories.

                                      

The Boss Of Me

Now, I've been the boss and I've been the worker. I've had some fine supervisors in my time. Producers. Editors. Managers. Agents. Brokers.

I believe that I can speak for all of them when I confide in you that I can't be bossed. There are, I'm not proud to add, women from my past who would use the term "pig-headed" to vouch for my assessment.

Oh, well.

                                    

Don't Start Me Thinking

Words are pretty much my only tools and, to tell you the truth, I'm tired of 'em. My thoughts become prisoner of a limited vocabulary and I grieve over what I am unable to express. 

Music helps. Every now and then a melody will express something that words can't handle. Beethoven. Lennon-McCartney. Glenn Miller. Dayna Kurtz.

There is so much more in my heart that I long to convey. Keeps me going.

 

Plant Seeds

Grace. I've never done anything with grace. It should come naturally to me. I've been around it all my life. Now dreams and rockets go up in smoke and I've learned to enjoy the show. 

Cursed with a good memory, I pore through old stories and old sweaters, looking for a second dose of satisfaction. How on earth did I get here?

I dry my palms and count my lucky stars. They're all my lucky stars.

Give us peace on earth and end this dreadful, dreadful war.

Kindest Wishes, Warmest Regards

We worried that television would ruin our culture. Our love/hate relationship with the medium has taken some queer twists and turns over the decades. By 1949 there were nearly one hundred TV stations in the United States. In 1951 I Love Lucy  went on the air and the deal was sealed.

The movie industry worried that television, an "inferior" entertainment form, would spell doom for their business, just as radio had once fretted over motion pictures and newspapers had feared radio.

In fact, most historians agree that Walter Cronkite hastened the end of the Viet Nam war by merely telling us the truth on network television. Crusty, old Ed Sullivan brought us, first, Elvis and then, less than ten years later, the Beatles, to insure that rock'n'roll would change our culture and everyone else's, too.

When SpongeBob SquarePants upstaged Maroon 5, while five million bucks worth of fireworks couldn't stifle the yawns, television documented some kind of end of rock'n'roll, too, at last night's Super Bowl. I would be a lot more broken up about making any such statement if the poor old thing hadn't been on life support for so long. You do remember 50% of The Who boring us all to death a few years back, don't you.

As a consumer raised on television, movies, radio and newspapers; as a charter devotee of rock'n'roll, I feel qualified to put forth the notion that scale has greatly diminished all of them. I honestly don't know whether to feel sorry for a kid who will pay big money to see a skinny seventy-five year old hop around on a gigantic stage, surrounded by other aging millionaires, one hundred and two rows away, or share his excitement over his witnessing some form of history.

"How do you even know that it was Mick?"

"I could see him on the giant screen behind them!"

Well, now television is no longer limited to three networks. As I suddenly find myself working to catch up on the first season of Sex Education on Netflix, I see signs of change that even I might embrace. Keep in mind that this is a show that is meant for viewers fifty years younger than I am. It just happens to resonate personally for many reasons.

What's next? NFL? NASCAR? Be afraid, Simon & Schuster, Warner Brothers, Paramount, WWE-

be very afraid.

A Puddle Of Protoplasm and the Religious Right

Just how desperate for affection do you have to be  before you beg? Why do we live in a world so short on love when everyone is born with a boundless supply? Somehow, I always thought that lonely had a limit. 

When I was a kid I always heard of "bottomless wells." That was a thing in rural Alabama. I remember asking Aunt Noot and Uncle Murray, "Is that a bottomless well?," wherever we went. It was a concept, like ghosts and haunted houses, that made for a kid's nightmares.

Here's to the lonely.

Long Gone

There was a day I would have had her. Oh, I don't mean to brag. I was socially awkward then, too. I just didn't know. I'm not quoting from some old blues song here, my love was like a heat-seeking missile. When it hit me, whatever it is, nothing else ever mattered. I didn't eat, couldn't sleep. I spoke poetry. Not good poetry, but real poetry. Inspired poetry.

Now I write songs that will never be heard.

In human years, most things are behind me, good and bad. In butterfly time, I've just begun. Physical beauty is fleeting. Nobody seems more oblivious to that fact than the young, beautiful ones. Now I don't much care what anyone thinks of me as long as they don't think I'm unkind.