Sunday Drive: Magic

Your Head Trucker in his salad days, far too many summers ago.

This lovely song transports me back to the idyllic summer of 1980, when I had just come out and, after a long, hard struggle, just graduated from college too - a time when it was easy to believe in magic, love, and destiny.  Ah, youth!

Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?





Really, it was like coming to life, a sleeper awakening, full of light and song and hope, while the enchantment lasted. I can yet recall, when I hear these tunes, the happy anticipations I felt, the future a shining road at my feet. Ah, joy!

Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?





But age we must. In the end, of course, memory is all that remains of smiles and tears alike, and that too must sink into oblivion one day and leave no trace - and who can say what becomes of the soul, once shed of all its precious freight of earthly hope and desire?  Ah, humanity!

Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?

The T.A.M.I. Show

Our gay sister, the lovely Lesley Gore, singing at the T.A.M.I. Show -
when it was still respectable for a girl to sing rock and roll,
while dressed - and acting - like a lady.

My truckbuddy Tim over in sunny rainy Spain is working on another essay, which he's sent me a draft of - and something in it made me go look up some old sixties rock performances on YouTube. And to my amazement, I found that somebody has uploaded the complete film of the legendary T.A.M.I. Show from 1964 - lots of great music and classic performances there, thought the rest of you fellas might want to revisit your memories with this.

Performers include:

• The Beach Boys
• Chuck Berry
• James Brown
• Marvin Gaye
• Gerry & the Pacemakers
• Lesley Gore
• Jan and Dean
• Smokey Robinson and The Miracles
• The Rolling Stones
• The Supremes

Oh my, that was a good time to be young.  Who's your fave?

Sunday Drive: Remember When

My buddy M. Pierre's continuing story of a day in childhood spent with his Aunt Chin puts me in mind of this song.  I remember being so small, so innocent, so trusting - once upon a time.  So very long ago now.  Lord, where have all the years gone?

Enjoy.

If you can stand the blatant heterosexuality, that is. Why oh why do those people have to flaunt themselves all the time and shove it down people's throats like this?

The Persistence of Memory

Vacancy

The ex-roommate has found himself a little house of his own, and I told him there's no rush getting his stuff moved out of here.  So all week, he's been coming back taking a carload or two a day.  Last night he called to say he had gotten his bed set up and was sleeping in the new place for the first time.

It's an odd feeling here.  Every day I come home and find some familiar something gone, disappeared.  A table.  A chair.  A pair of curtains.  A dishcloth.  A bath mat.  A picture.  A plant.  A mixer.  A toaster.  Magnets off the refrigerator door.  The little homey touches that you take for granted, don't really miss until they are gone.

It's all for the best.  Trust me.  Yet when someone moves out of your life, you can't help being struck by the blank spot they leave behind on the bare walls of memory.