I've noticed lately that I am getting more anxious about going outside. It's ironic, because right now going out and about is what I want most. I've been fantasizing about going to all my favorite restaurants and bars, going back to some of my favorite hotels (The Mission Inn in Riverside, Mountain Lodge in Telluride), taking a road trip to every state in the Union including Hawaii and Alaska. I want to put together excursions with all my friends. I want to go to the beach every day, hike on all the hiking trails. I want to get on an airplane, a train, a cruise ship.
But, when I am running out of food, I have been procrastinating going to the grocery store. It's like I am scared, like I don't know what outside is like anymore, what is going on out there. Is it dangerous, are there power hungry cops out there lying in wait to arrest me for some peculiar transgression, demanding to know where I am going, what I am doing. "Oh, I was shopping for groceries, there is food in my trunk, want to see it?"
But when I do go outside, everything seems empty. Like a bomb was dropped and nobody survived except for me. And when I do see another person, somebody daring to walk his dog or a woman arriving in the parking lot in her car, I want to glom onto them like they're a life raft, but watch out, be careful, can't get too close! Keep your social distance! It's like I am the drowning man whose instinct is to climb up on the rescuers head and end up drawing them as well as myself.
Going around in my hot, itchy, and peculiar smelling mask with mist fogging my glasses, I feel like I am a cipher, and everybody else in their mask is a zombie. I feel my smile uselessly spreading across the bottom half of my face, but then I realize nobody can see it, and all I see of them is a cold stare coming from illegible eyes. If I do speak, attempting to say something friendly or funny, they don't even seem to realize that I am talking to them. If I feel all closed up inside myself, they must feel the same themselves. Wow, what a way to separate people from each other.
So I just don't understand outside and don't quite know how to act, or even think that I can act. I have somehow been ostracized. However, what has helped me is to think what it must be like to be one of those out there working for the public in this atmosphere, those in the grocery store or the pharmacy, all they see all day are faceless expressionless eyes and I think they have to suffer their whole day without ever seeing a smile or a friendly face. At Home Depot I was having trouble getting my credit card to pay for something I wanted to buy and an employee, equally masked, helped me get it to work. I said to her, "You never get to see a smile all day, but just know that I am giving you one now but I have to do it vocally." She then said, "Oh, then will you please put in a good word for me?" and showed me where on the receipt I can find a way to go on-line and give her a good evaluation for her service. I said to her, "Oh, yes, definitely--THAT will be smile for you." Moments like that do keep the incipient agoraphobia at bay. But I am worried that if this whole thing goes on much longer, I will permanently lose my real smile due to atrophy.
Thursday, April 16, 2020
LockDown Musical Interlude--ESPECIALLY WONDERFUL SONGS: April Day 16, 2020
If you want to be socked in the gut with power and emotion, turn to Aretha Franklin. This masterpiece takes you on a ride of desire, pain, understanding, struggle, hope, and overcoming. It's about awesome strength, the faith in the heart of someone who loves you no matter what (adamantine love), a good woman and a man who wants to soar. Yes, we can get all tangled up and waylaid, but we never need to be totally out and many caught in the most despair have demonstrated that nevertheless they can turn around and thrive. Reach out and hold on.
16. Song name: Mr. Spain
Artist: Aretha Franklin
Songwriter: Carolyn Plummer
Produced by Quincy Jones and Aretha Frankln
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
LockDown Musical Interlude--ESPECIALLY WONDERFUL SONGS: April Day 15, 2020
One of the concepts I fully believe in is the intimate connection between love and sorrow. That maybe sounds like a cruel creation, kind of like the concept (that I am not sure I agree with) that says that when things are very good, uh oh, soon it will go bad. That is a defeatist way to look at life, robbing you from enjoying the good times. But with the love/sorrow connection, the opposite of love is indifference. If you don't care about something, then there would be no sorrow associated with it, you are still in the neutral nothing state of not caring about whatever it is. In the physical world there are sorrows that are going to happen, but what a gift it is to have love accompany it. You have been able to enjoy the love that was involved, and if sorrow comes, you have the opportunity to feel that love more deeply and you can keep it alive in your heart forever.
We are now halfway through this month of lockdown and people are now starting to go stir-crazy, and justifiably so. When you go shopping for groceries and everybody in the store is wearing a mask, nobody can see your smile, and people's identities are effectively hidden. And somehow this makes everybody silent, as well. And realize that the various workers everywhere you go never see a human smile all day long. People are suffering and fearing all across the board, and at first it was making me love them more, opening up my awareness of the various miseries that others were going through. But now when everyone is publicly hidden behind masks, and we are all fearful of every unidentified person who is nothing more than a potential carrier of contagion, indifference toward others seems to be proliferating, if not outright hate.
But in there to save us is our love, and music can help us continue to feel that love. It definitely helps me a lot, so that is why I transmit it over to you.
So here comes a song that is clearly an expression of the love that flows along with sorrow. It is sung in honor of Ryan White, a boy who decades ago suffered the existence of AIDS that he contracted via a blood transfusion. At that time, AIDS wasn't really understood, but greatly feared, and there was a hew and cry about how he should be banned from going to school, because his mere presence was supposedly extremely dangerous to the other children. We know now that you do not get AIDS from social contact.
Whatever people currently think and believe about Michael Jackson, I will not get deeply into that. I don't actually KNOW any more than most other people actually KNOW. And now he is dead and what we are left with is his music, which is amazingly good. My belief is "By their fruits ye shall know them". Michael Jackson was one of the most generous people giving to charity, and whenever he was traveling around the world giving concerts, on his "spare time", he was going into countless hospitals, visiting the suffering children, giving them gifts, and letting then take pictures with him. But what hits me the most is this song that I am presenting to you today. This one I classify as a video, please watch the visuals, which will increase the impact. What is most telling to me is Michael's final notes to this song. I think he has fully demonstrated here his genuine love instead of a hidden hate. He was a giver, not a taker. Maybe he did bang-up job of acting in this song; since I don't have anywhere near that level of talent, I can't imagine it. But if so, what a waste of a such talent. Why "fake" love? Why not feel it for real? Love is one of the most precious gifts we have ever received. Every person deserves to feel it, and to give it to others. Here with this I wish you all immense love that you truly do deserve. And to the extent that you are suffering, feel the power of the love that can balance it out.
15. Song name: Gone Too Soon (Video)
We are now halfway through this month of lockdown and people are now starting to go stir-crazy, and justifiably so. When you go shopping for groceries and everybody in the store is wearing a mask, nobody can see your smile, and people's identities are effectively hidden. And somehow this makes everybody silent, as well. And realize that the various workers everywhere you go never see a human smile all day long. People are suffering and fearing all across the board, and at first it was making me love them more, opening up my awareness of the various miseries that others were going through. But now when everyone is publicly hidden behind masks, and we are all fearful of every unidentified person who is nothing more than a potential carrier of contagion, indifference toward others seems to be proliferating, if not outright hate.
But in there to save us is our love, and music can help us continue to feel that love. It definitely helps me a lot, so that is why I transmit it over to you.
So here comes a song that is clearly an expression of the love that flows along with sorrow. It is sung in honor of Ryan White, a boy who decades ago suffered the existence of AIDS that he contracted via a blood transfusion. At that time, AIDS wasn't really understood, but greatly feared, and there was a hew and cry about how he should be banned from going to school, because his mere presence was supposedly extremely dangerous to the other children. We know now that you do not get AIDS from social contact.
Whatever people currently think and believe about Michael Jackson, I will not get deeply into that. I don't actually KNOW any more than most other people actually KNOW. And now he is dead and what we are left with is his music, which is amazingly good. My belief is "By their fruits ye shall know them". Michael Jackson was one of the most generous people giving to charity, and whenever he was traveling around the world giving concerts, on his "spare time", he was going into countless hospitals, visiting the suffering children, giving them gifts, and letting then take pictures with him. But what hits me the most is this song that I am presenting to you today. This one I classify as a video, please watch the visuals, which will increase the impact. What is most telling to me is Michael's final notes to this song. I think he has fully demonstrated here his genuine love instead of a hidden hate. He was a giver, not a taker. Maybe he did bang-up job of acting in this song; since I don't have anywhere near that level of talent, I can't imagine it. But if so, what a waste of a such talent. Why "fake" love? Why not feel it for real? Love is one of the most precious gifts we have ever received. Every person deserves to feel it, and to give it to others. Here with this I wish you all immense love that you truly do deserve. And to the extent that you are suffering, feel the power of the love that can balance it out.
15. Song name: Gone Too Soon (Video)
Artist: Michael Jackson
Lyrics by Larry Grossman, Music by Buz Kohan
Produced by Michael Jackson and Bruce Swedien
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
LockDown Musical Interlude--ESPECIALLY WONDERFUL SONGS: April Day 14, 2020
I was making my bed and had a Michael Jackson mix playing on the stereo when I was stopped dead in my tracks by this song. I had heard it before, of course, lots of times, but suddenly I felt like this was one of the most beautiful songs ever. Certainly it was the most beautiful Michael Jackson song. He had many outstanding songs, some powerful, some with infectious rhythms, and others having other outstanding qualities, but this one was the most beautiful.
It's funny, for the longest time I thought Michael's voice was the only one in the song. After all, he could do high notes and could mix in various multi-track takes, but finally I realized that the female part was sung by Siedah Garrett. Well, I am a huge Siedah Garrett fan, and I had come to know her from her work with Quincy Jones, one of my all-time favorite musical artists. I have every one of Quincy Jones's recordings and, well, all of Michael Jackson's too. (Siedah Garrett is the one who wrote a well-known Michael Jackson song, "The Man In The Mirror".) I think most people only associate Quincy Jones with Michael Jackson, but they worked together on only three albums, I believe. Probably the top three biggest selling albums of all time, but still, Michael did many more albums that just those three. And Quincy Jones's career is beyond peer. I had been attracted to his work six years before I got interested in Michael Jackson. The Quincy Jones album that got me to sit up and take notice was his album, You've Got It Bad, Girl, released in 1973. The Michael Jackson album that got me to sit up and notice was Off the Wall, released in 1979. Interestingly, the record album covers of those two are nearly identical. Each one shows a full-length photo of the artist standing in a power pose that goes all the way the way down the album and up the other side. Well, Quincy was the producer of both albums, so that makes sense.
14. Song name: I Can’t Stop Loving You
Artist: Michael Jackson, Siedah Garrett
Lyrics and Music by Michael Jackson
Produced by: Quincy Jones
Monday, April 13, 2020
Lockdown Musical Interlude--ESPECIALLY WONDERFUL SONGS: April Day 13, 2020
I'm still in a romantic mood. Here's another Michael Franks song that grabbed me. I loved living in New York when I did. It seemed that every moment was an adventure or filled with wonder. In this song, from the very beginning there is a sense of magic and a promise of good things coming coming up. The lyrics have such great imagery, I can see the drive down the Hudson, feel Central Park in summer, remember loosing ourselves in great museums, recalling all the fun we had dancing to live music in a basement lounge. I also love Michael Franks's use of tropical rhythms. Are those appropriate? Why not...New York rocks.
13: Song name: Summer In New York
Artist: Michael Franks
Lyrics and Music by Michael Franks
Sunday, April 12, 2020
LockDown Musical Interlude--ESPECIALLY WONDERFUL SONGS: April Day 12, 2020
Michael Franks is one of my absolute favorite musical artists. I have every album he ever recorded. And while there are so very many great songs of his, I still fall back on this one, "Barefoot On The Beach", as my favorite one. The music alone grabs me, but the lyrics are right up my alley. I for sure am a beach lover, and have had the privilege of having been in some of the very best beaches in the world (but to be sure there are tons more that I have not been to!). Interestingly, even though I have been to several beaches in Florida, I have never been to Captiva. I think I am going to have to remedy that.
I am not sure what the situation is in this song, where a man has a beach bungalow in one place and is inviting his lover (or somebody!) to fly down and join him, but regardless, I love the idea of that. I remember one time when I was a senior at U.C. Berkeley and my girlfriend was a junior at U.C.L.A. and I invited her to fly up and spend a weekend with me in my dorm room. Being on the single bed was just fine! Later on, we did the same thing in reverse, I flew down to Los Angeles and spent a weekend with her in her dorm room (and then spent time on the beach in Redondo Beach making sand candles). Just that situation of being separated geographically but coming together in some glorious place is very romantic. There was a time when I put together a narrowboating trip in England and Wales for six of us, all of whom flew in from somewhere else. When the trip was over, one of the women said, "Anywhere in the world you want to go and would like me to join you, I will be there." Very wonderful.
Two things in this song I especially like. The first one is near the beginning when he says "I'm in!". I can just feel in my body that total surrender, just lying back with perfect relaxation into that delicious water. Mmmm, magnificent. The other one is my favorite rhyming lyric: "No attire is required, just a toothbrush, dear, 'cause here we don't wear much." Say that over and over again and make it happen for real.
12: Song name: Barefoot On The Beach
Artist: Michael Franks
Lyrics and Music by Michael Franks
Saturday, April 11, 2020
LockDown Musical Interlude--ESPECIALLY WONDERFUL SONGS: April Day 11, 2020
I think we need some more Jimmy Durante. This song is deceptively simple. It's not even fully clear that Jimmy is even singing it, it's a kind of talking singing, but I feel that he really is singing. But does it even matter, it is so heartfelt and such a good example of the genius combination of words and music that it grasps you in your heart. I believe that philosophy, make someone happy and you'll be happy too (also deceptively simple). My favorite rhyme here is "Once you've found her, make your world around her". Delicious.
11: Song name: Make Someone Happy
Artist: Jimmy Durante
Lyrics by Adolph Green and Betty Comden, Music by Jule Styne
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