I feel really sad today. I am listening to Trio at work. I brought in a bunch of my favorite cds so I can play them instead of my radio station. I listened to the entire Outkast "Stankonia" album. That album is like comfort food for the soul. Now I'm halfway through Trio's "Da Da Da." More comfort food. This song "Bye Bye" always makes me melancholy. Trudging along through the chords and beats, the lyrics only a little more than a heavy whisper "sweetheart, say goodbye, say goodbye, to all her dreams. Bye bye. I don't wanna, but now she's gone, now she's gone, far away. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. I don't wanna, but now she's gone. Outta sight. Bye bye. Sweetheart, say goodbye, say goodbye, to all her love. Bye bye. Bye bye..." How is it that Trio was able to transform the simplest lyrics into such unique and original songs? I guess it's all in the music and vocals. Something so special there. Something friendly and cool about his voice. Something playful about the music. Like they weren't taking themselves seriously. Just having a good time. Letting their souls fly free in their creative outpouring. Some songs inducing feelings of bounding freedom and light heartedness, others pulling you into a wave of nostalgia.
I've talked about them before. They always take me back to happy childhood memories. I wish I could go back to being that child right now. I wish I could go back to our yard on Fifth St. and find myself laying in the cool green grass watching the palm trees dancing and bowing to one another, basking in the warm sun or bickering with my siblings while this music blared out the back door. Nothing to worry about. Innocence and self confidence in tact, the major desires and dramas revolving mostly around candy and crushes. Before life became about work and relationships and trying to reach elusive goals. And trying to keep from taking things too seriously. This album is helping a bit.
You may find this hard to believe, but I actually started a poem on just that theme this morning--going back to childhood. Strangely, this is a theme that has very rarely crossed my mind, even though my childhood was a relatively normal affair, perhaps too normal, well some parts of it at least. Normal. Normal. That was me. Normal. Normal. Now I miss my baby. Trio could have done a lot with that.
Anyway, the first lines of the poem, which I never finished, are "I am tempted to put the car in reverse/re-traverse/some far off place"
But when you try to go back you're all grown up and shit and the kids look at you like you're just a pervert or a weirdo and you can't really relate to what kids are up to these days anyway unless you hang around them all the time in which case you might as well be a high school teacher or a Catholic priest and then you start to wonder how can anybody grow up in times like these or any other times really because there's a lot of complexity whether you were born yesterday or 6,352 years ago.
If I had been in Eden I would have eaten the apple too, a bunch of 'em.
Cheer up--life sucks for everybody!
And yes, I talked to cclawyer yesterday. It's always nice to share ideas with people who think through life.
Posted by: Thomas at May 4, 2004 02:17 PMI need to get back to writing poetry. What is a "normal, normal, normal" childhood Thomas? I picture you trotting along with a little red balloon holding hands with an infinitely patient, perfectly dressed and coiffed mother and being led by a strong, silent dad. The only way in which I can think that my childhood was not pretty normal was the whole Tibetan Buddhist thing and the fact that I was an inordinately naughty kid at an extremely young age.
What's really funny to me is that as a child I was very anxious to grow up. I always felt like a grownup stuffed in a little girl's body. Now that I am an adult, I feel all this wistfulness. I realize this is not uncommon. Hahaa!
Posted by: Maria at May 5, 2004 12:01 PMMaria, your questions is forcing me to do some serious thinking. Normal to me meant snotty-red-sweat-faced youngsters screaming wildly through the streets of our otherwise peaceful neighborhood, a brother who regularly inflicted mild forms of torture on me and my sisters, including defacing and deforming dolls, young unappreciated suburban youth competing for attention with seven screaming siblings. Oh, there is a long long list of normal things that happened to me, but how do you distill eighteen years of childhood into a paragraph. My poetry, when read comprehensively, probably tells the story best.
When I left Maryland in 1981 to go to law school I was 21. I thought I was leaving because interest rates were high on the east coast, and the press talked of the glory and glamour of going west. Really, as I have now finally figured out, my motivation was to get out frm under my older brother's shadow. My relationship with my old brother was a defining part of my youth, and now that I have seen the sunshine, my relationship with him is enormously emotionally complex. He was a terrible role model, but in many ways a great brother. I'm not even sure how to address his character in this short paragraph, other than to comment on how he was my father figure, and oh! what a father he was. I'll give you a small taste. He had a thing called "grasshopper day" where once a year he would celebrate the existence of grasshoppers by pulling off their wings and leaving them in the roadway, by sword fighting them with a pin, and by otherwise being God in their pitiful lives.
I strongly believe that, because of his somewhat unconventional way of thinking, I developed my own creative side. This is good. Very good.
Anyway, in conclusion, you have made a valid point. Normal's pretty tough to figure.
Posted by: Thomas at May 5, 2004 02:45 PM