NaBloPoMo

Left of the Dial

The Replacements – Left of the Dial

By now you’ve probably heard that Tim Kaine is a Replacements fan. He included two Mats songs on his Spotify playlist, “I Will Dare” and “Bastards of Young” (I approve of this message!). He definitely earned a couple of points in my book for that. He’s still not as far left of the dial as I’d like to see but I can understand the reasoning behind picking a moderate Democrat from a swing state who speaks Spanish. This year is all about securing the White House and if that’s going to help, I’m thinking a vice president who can sing along to “Androgynous” is by far a better pick than a guy who would like nothing more than to outlaw anything that has even a hint of an LGBTQ undertone.

Superstition

Stevie Wonder – Superstition

I woke up to the news that the Chicago Cubs had won the World Series, breaking a historic 108-year drought. A number of posts on Facebook were celebrating the win and pointing to Hillary as being from the Chicago area and a Cubs fan and surely this was a harbinger of another kind of historic win.

Normally I don’t think of myself as being superstitious but immediately I felt a sense of panic about conflating historic baseball victories and presidential elections. Those of us living in Red Sox nation (whether you are a fan or not) will well remember 2004, when the Red Sox won the World Series, breaking the Curse of the Bambino, and a Massachusetts Senator was the Democratic candidate. Living in my comfortable blue bubble I was buoyed by the Red Sox win, even if I don’t care a bit about the team or baseball in general, simply because it felt like it meant something. Massachusetts all the way, baby! Yes!

Needless to say, I was never more crushed than I was on the day after Election Day 2004. I’ve had a lot of disappointing outcomes over the course of my voting life but that one had been so clear cut for me and I couldn’t believe we were going to have to endure four more years of W. And the Red Sox win hadn’t done a thing.

I was already nervous about this year long before the candidates had even been chosen because of the date. November 8th. My first presidential election occurred on November 8th and, until that John Kerry loss, it had been my most disheartening Election Day. I’ll save that for another post but it sure wasn’t helping me to feel optimistic about things when I realized it. Adding the World Series connection to this upcoming contest was not helping.

I started looking for some ways that this year wasn’t going to be déjà vu but rather, a do-over. Someone else posted that in election years, when there was a 7th game in the World Series, a National League win has always equaled a Democratic win. I looked it up and it checks out. In the process I also realized that Curt Schilling was part of that Red Sox team in 2004 so, you know, he was probably a spoiler.

Anyway, as Stevie says, “superstition ain’t the way.” I’m working hard to not get spooked. The music is helping. It’s hard to be anxious when you’ve got a groove going on.

 

O Mio Babbino Caro

Kiri Te Kanawa – O Mio Babbino Caro

This evening we went to my daughter’s chorus concert. The group she is in and the orchestra performed this song together and I am sure I was not the only one in the high school auditorium who had these scenes running through their mind.

A Room With a View is largely responsible for my fascination with British period films, Merchant Ivory productions, and a longing for Italy that five years of Latin classes never managed to spark. I actually went to graduate school with hopes of killing two birds with one stone; have the study abroad experience I didn’t have in college because I’d been too busy trying to transfer, and put myself on a path to working, somehow, with making film adaptations from books. This movie was going to be my thesis.

Ever since I first saw the film, and I can’t even remember now when that first was, I believed that all I needed to be able to start living the life I was meant to live, was to travel to somewhere as beautiful as the places so many movies I loved had been filmed. I was sure that if I could throw open my double window like Lucy Honeychurch and see the splendors of Florence all around me, my George Emerson would appear in a field of waist high wildflowers, just like that. And if that was too far-fetched, well, there was no shortage of other films to choose from as inspiration. Enchanted April, Howard’s End, all the Jane Austen film adaptations, everything Kenneth Branagh did, it’s a long list.

My first attempt at this was my first European trip in 1994. I’d quit my job and had this plan of settling in Prague and doing something to support myself. It didn’t matter what, I was just going to live in this beautiful city and things would click into place. I did have contacts and I’d done a lot of research, but after only two weeks I knew it wasn’t going to work out. I continued on to Austria, spending close to a week in Salzburg so I could see every inch of the place that had been burned into my brain from years of watching The Sound of Music. I returned to Washington D.C. from Vienna and figured I just needed to recalibrate this plan. Prague was beautiful but it was still shaking off the Cold War in a lot of ways and I was probably too young and uncertain about myself to have really made a go of things.

I wound up back in Maine by the summer of 1994. Always intending to leave before the snow flies, I was still there for winter, and the two after that. There’s nothing like a Maine winter to make you wish for sun-kissed foreign vistas. I spent a lot of money at the video store borrowing more and more films to transport myself to someplace else. Even soggy British countrysides were an improvement. That dream of the perfect place and the perfect life was still there. I felt like I needed a more realistic goal though, and that’s how the graduate school idea took hold.

“Oh, but dreams have a knack of just not coming true.” I finally made it to graduate school, in the middle of nowhere in mid-west Wales, and the professor who taught a course about film adaptations was on sabbatical for the year. Foiled again.

 

(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding

Elvis Costello – (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding

It’s November 1, the start of NaBloPoMo, and I haven’t written a post since July. I’m not sure I have the stamina for NaBloPoMo this month but the longer the gap gets, the harder it will be.

Mostly I have just been flattened by this election. I have read plenty of articles dissecting and analyzing how we ended up here and none of that makes me feel any better about anything. It is beyond my comprehension how there can be so much bigotry, vitriol, and hate. I had to step back for a while because it was all just so mean and even if I felt like I was fighting the good fight, my preaching to my tiny choir wasn’t going to be the thing that changed anyone’s mind.

But I find that I need to change my mindset or I’m going to have an ulcer. The only thing that has ever helped me through really hard and stressful times is music. A month of posting music every day might help me, at least, and it certainly can’t hurt. I’m sure there will be some political songs, because it’s November and it’s me, but I also might just post a song I heard that distracted me for three minutes. Apologies in advance for saying too much, or not enough.

Hourglass

Catfish and the Bottlemen – Hourglass

Another NaBloPoMo completed. It was definitely easier this time around, though I still feel like I had a number of lame entries. Maybe there weren’t as many this year though or maybe my standards have just slipped.

I have read accounts from other people who participated in NaBloPoMo that they really feel like they develop their writing through this exercise but I don’t feel like I ever devoted the time (or had it to devote) to hitting a stride as far as that goes. There are only so many hours in the day and you have to spend a couple of minutes here and there doing things like watching Ewan McGregor.

Don’t You (Forget About Me)

Simple Minds – Don’t You (Forget About Me)

On Saturday, my high school class in New York held their 30th reunion. I wasn’t there, we were up in Maine for Thanksgiving with my mother. One of my former classmates had added me to the Facebook group earlier in the fall and I was halfway tempted to go but logistically, it just didn’t make sense. Plus, I didn’t graduate from there, as we moved the summer after 10th grade, and I’m not at all sure people that hadn’t also been in elementary school with me would have remembered me.

Today there have been lots of pictures from the reunion posted to the FB group. I am silently sitting here looking at them all and wishing someone would get busy tagging everyone because, hey, not everyone looks the same as they did 30 years ago. To be sure, some people I could easily identify and for the most part, everyone looks really great for our age. They fared much better than the Maine high school reunion pictures I saw from their get together this summer.

I could have attended either or both of those reunions but one of the consequences of having split my high school years between two places is that I didn’t have enough time in either to really have a close group of friends. Typically after you graduate from high school and people go off to college in different places, you at least see your old friends when you’re all home for summer or Christmas. We did go back to New York a lot that first year but even then I could already see that the dynamics of the social scene in my class were shifting and I wasn’t going to be a part of it. It’s hard to know if we hadn’t moved if I would have been hanging with the cool kids or not. I’d like to think so but I remember feeling like I was losing my friends to the other kids who were still there. The only way for me to keep in touch was through writing letters (because long-distance phone calls were really expensive) and how many teenagers are going to do that? Not many, I can tell you. Out of sight, out of mind.

As I drive my daughter to her high school every morning, I sometimes get a little peak into what her life is like. She’ll tell me she’s got a quiz in a class that day or she’ll see someone she knows as we wait in the drop off line and tell me a little something about them. One morning she complained that high school wasn’t what she expected it to be and that “all the movies lied” because she felt they hadn’t portrayed the reality of what a slog it was. I told her she had just been watching the wrong movies because all of the high school movies from my teenage years were 100% accurate. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (’82), Sixteen Candles (’84), The Breakfast Club (’85). Am I right? Anyone? Anyone?

I think a John Hughes marathon may be in order. Which one do you think I should have her watch her first?

After the Disco

Broken Bells – After the Disco

Man, I am so tired. It’s not like I did anything today to account for being tired either. When I have a couple of days off, I find I immediately start staying up later and sleeping later in the morning. Ever since the start of the school year I’ve been getting up really early to take my daughter to school. Maybe those early days and lack of sleep is finally just catching up with me.