Musical Memories #1

Once, train travel ruled.
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A piece of the past

So ... @slobberchops and @bozz each have this thing going on their blogs about music. Frankly, I think they’re in cahoots. I’m not sure why that should be, but my suspicions do point that direction. Anyway, their shenanigans have given me some of my own ideas about things to put on this blog. It needs a little fluffing up, but most of the ideas I come up with don’t fit the theme of this place -- and I’ve already played that game once already.

I had to take @theinbox off the @enchantedspirit blog and give it a home of its own because my spiritual / metaphysical / new age blog was never meant to be a curation way station. Now twenty-some posts are in one place and forty-some are in the other and TBH, it’s a mess. You see I fret about stuff like that -- which gives you a glimpse into my life in other respects. Make of it what you will.

But that “glimpse into my life” is taking on a theme of its own -- because I believe a person’s taste in music and movies and entertainment, well, it tells you something about him -- or her. More revealing in its own way, maybe than if I wrote an actual piece on exactly that. You see, character and psychology fascinate me. Psych was one of my majors in college. And Astrology is a personal passion.

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Through the cold corridors of time

People try to fool you about themselves all the time -- or at least shape your thinking. They even fool themselves about themselves. I saw a meme the other day that said, “Become the virtuous person you think you already are.” Boy, doesn’t that say it? People are intriguing. Endlessly so. Especially once you get behind the facade.

So maybe I’ll learn some things about me in the posts I put here. I am self-reflective to a fault. My best friend from childhood whom I’ve known now going on 60 years sent me a book on my birthday. Women Who Think Too Much. I figure she’s trying to tell me something. Tag along for a while ... and you be the judge.

Anyway, a while ago @slobberchops wanted to know what was the first song you bonded with -- and it didn’t take me but a minute to come up with that long-ago piece of my past. Yep, it says something about my 7-year-old self -- and the person she became. So, too, I suspect, will the other pieces I put on this blog. Music. Movies. Books. It’ll keep me going for a while.

So, I got to thinking ... if the song linked above was the first one I fell in love with, what was the first song I remembered ... period? And, I think it was this one.

Sentimental Journey -- 1944

When I hear this, it’s nearly Christmas. I’m in the living room of my grandmother’s house in Lubbock, Texas. I’m still an only child, so that means I’m three years old. (My little sister was on the scene by the Christmas when I was four.) This song is playing on the radio. I’d heard it enough to know I didn’t like it. I couldn’t imagine why the people on the radio insisted on playing it so much. I still don’t like it. It has way too much of the big-band swing sound to it (of course, being Les Brown.)

The big band songs without exception pull up a whole panoply of memories and feelings in me, full of dread and terror and fist-clenching desperation ... as if I am immersed in the gray awfulness that was WWII in Europe. There is no way to explain this rationally. I wasn’t born until 1947. The war was well over by then. Why this should tug so hard at a deep-conscious connection from another time and place ... well, I have my explanations for it. You’ll have to come up with your own.

I was fully-grown ... probably in my 30’s ... before I made the connection that it was Doris Day singing this song. That still wasn’t enough to save it.

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