A to Z Theme 2016

For my 2016 A to Z theme I used a meme that I ran across on the blog of Bridget Straub who first saw it on the blog of Paula Acton. This meme is a natural for me to use on my memoir blog. It's an A to Z concept and it's about me. No research and nothing complicated. I'm given twenty six questions or topics to discuss that are about me.

In April I kept my posts short and uncomplicated. In the midst of it all you might learn a few things about me that you didn't previously know.

Saturday, September 17, 2016

January 23-30, 1978 (Soundtrack of My Life)


       It's often said that life is strange, but compared to what?

Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory (1931...
Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory (1931), Museum of Modern Art (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

       Time can be a very precise measurement of the present, but it is often inaccurate when looking at the past.   Memories can meld together or get placed out of chronological order.  The memory can be an unreliable narrator regarding past events as it conveniently discards the unpleasant while exaggerating the importance of relatively insignificant events.   In the following post I question my memory in regards to a song that is among my favorites.

         In this post I offer another in my Soundtrack of My Life series. Robin at Your Daily Dose has been doing the Soundtrack of my Life posts on her blog for a while now. I had done a few of my own "life soundtracks" on my Tossing It Out blog as well as the song series (starting at this post) I did for my 2014 Blogging from A to Z April Challenge on Wrote By Rote. Be sure to visit and follow Your Daily Dose for more Life Soundtrack info. For my current back to the past post, I'm using the song "January 23-30, 1978" by Steve Forbert as my inspiration. If you like you can listen as you read the story that follows...





"January 23-30, 1978"

          What seems to be a somewhat odd title for a song actually is a time period described by the narrator of a song story by Steve Forbert.   While this date range can fit easily into my own life, there is no special significance to my knowledge that would be applicable in my personal history.  During that January week in 1978 I was getting ready to set out on tour with The World of Fantasy Players with my wife and our six month old baby.  I would have celebrated my birthday sometime that week since it comes on January 30th, but I can't recall any special thing that happened in connection with that event.

         But it's not anything about the song title that impacts me--it's the content of the lyrics, the events Forbert describes.   This song seems so akin to my own life experience that the story told within those lyrics touches the heart of my memory and reminds me of things that I too have lived through.  With a few changes this could be my song--a snippet of my own life history.  I am stirred within each time I hear this song as it has become part of my own life soundtrack.

         After I'd essentially moved away from my hometown in Tennessee to run away with a magic show in 1975, my visits home became fewer as time went on and my show biz life meant more time on the road away from home.  As each year passed I became less close to my old circle of friends thus less aware of what their lives were like.  Old friends were getting married, starting families, and embarking upon careers or other endeavors.  When I would go back to stay with my parents for short visits I would try to hang out with friends and catch up with their lives.  The fact was though that we were growing apart, they in their small town world and me traipsing about the country.

          Now some nearly 40 years later my memory is faulty about when I first heard the Forbert song.  Somehow I came to associate first noticing this song in early 1980 when I was separated from my wife and staying with my parents in Tennessee.  I had taken a job driving for the limousine shuttle service at the Knoxville Airport.  My shift started early so I would drive to work at about 4 AM.

            In my hazy memory I seem to recall driving through Alcoa, the town where the airport is located, early one icy cold morning and listening to my cassette copy of Steve Forbert's Jackrabbit Slim album.  When "January 23-30, 1978" came on the lyrics really hit me as describing how my visits home had started to feel.   I got a sense that soon I would be gone to another town and living a life far away from my home that held so many fond memories for me.

          However, thinking back I'm not sure I had that cassette copy until a few years after the date that stood in my memory.  Perhaps my listening to this song driving through Alcoa early one morning reminded me of driving to my airport limousine job and all of the other events of my life.   Maybe it was another visit.   It's kind of crazy how mixed up my memory is about this minor incident in my life.  From the standpoint of the scope of my entire life, hearing this song at some specific but some unknown time shouldn't have meant that much and yet that drive and that song at that moment vividly stands out in my memory.

        I'm reminded of that famous Salvador Dali painting "Persistence of Memory"--you know the one with the melting watches on the surreal landscape.  That depiction of time flowing and melding into the wholeness of everything is symbolic of the fluidity of all that I've been and where I've ended up in my life, a life where the past is not perfectly cataloged.  Not my life at least.  My mind seems to pick out certain things to remember even if they are not in the correct order.

        It doesn't really matter that much I suppose.   I understand what memory is telling me.   And yet I could be misinterpreting things as a matter of convenience.  

         What I do know is this:  There was a time when I was younger, when responsibility was a debate that I held within myself and consequences primarily affected only me.  We were all young, my friends and I, and then we moved on to other things and other people and other lives.  In other words we grew up--or pretended to.  

           Rarely do we capture the magic of the past in our tangible everyday lives.  Oh, sometimes we might get together with old friends for a few fleeting hours and everything seems as it once was.   Most of the past is only accessible by memory.  The memory might be spurred by a song such as this song from my own life soundtrack.  A song that might mean little to someone else, but something vast, strange, and maybe even unknowable to my mind.    A mystery that is really no mystery at all when I think about it, but a mystery nonetheless.

           Do you have a song that is attached to a memory so strongly that it haunts you when you hear it?    Did you drift away from most of your old friends from youth?    Do you have a disconnect with certain memories where you are no longer certain of when exactly they occurred?






16 comments:

  1. I have way way too many songs attached to specific memories to list. As for friends from my youth, there was about a 20 year or so drift but then Facebook came along and we're all reunited again. I never lost touch with my best friends though.

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    1. JoJo, yes, we always have Facebook. That's where most of my contacts happen with friends from my past. Even if I don't see them at least I have some idea what they've been doing.

      Lee

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  2. Boy I have a story to tell you about my first MLB game- but baseball reference wont back me up, lol!

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  3. I can't pin point a particular song but back in the 60's I shared an old Rambler convertible with my brother and I loved to ride with the top down and the music blaring. I drive a convertible now and when I've got the top down and the 60's channel on the radio, I have moments when I'm 16 again.

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    1. LD, That's very much what I'm talking about here. It doesn't necessarily have to be a song, but just some kind of touchstone that takes us back to another time.

      Lee

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  4. Lee, I do not remember this song. In September 1978, I was junior in High School. I remember that being a very good year for me. I felt more at ease with who I was and happy to be where I was. I still was no where near the person I am today but that comes with years of change and growth. I don't think I'd like to go back to do it all over again. That was just too hard. lol

    You asked, Do you have a song that is attached to a memory so strongly that it haunts you when you hear it? I do but these songs don't come to mind and the flood gate of emotions aren't spurred until a familiar song plays on the radio or from my iTunes playlist. Did you drift away from most of your old friends from youth? I got married when I was 17 and then I moved to Knoxville. I recall my friends and I making promises to stay in touch. It seemed I did most of the reaching out with a lot of snail mail with few returns and when I'd go home to visit the folks then I'd call up my BFF to chat or to get up with them. After awhile those things stopped. We all were pulled different directions after a few years. Thankfully, social media has allowed us to see what's going in our lives and I regard them still as my BFF in a sweet, nostalgic way. I just don't want to lose that part of my past. Do you have a disconnect with certain memories where you are no longer certain of when exactly they occurred? I definitely get things out of order when it comes to life and music but then sometimes it's music that keeps pieces of my life in order. You're right, it's hard to really know when you're not remembering something correctly. I think that's just a normal progress of aging or maybe the importance we now place on things in the past. Either way, it gets in the way.

    Thanks for sharing a soundtrack from your life, my friend. Have a good weekend!

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    1. Cathy, thank goodness for social media (I guess). It's about the only way I keep up with old friends. In most recent years during my Tennessee visits I spend most of my time with my family and might see a few friends briefly. I don't go around making visits like I used to. It's kind of sad in a way, but I think it's like that for most people from what I hear.

      Writing down my memories helps some. Sometimes I'll make up timelines to help me get dates more accurate.

      Lee

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  5. The week of January 23, 1978 was the week Mary and I got married. Just wanted to mention that.

    Oddly enough, there's not a song that haunts me when I hear it. Odd given the part music plays in my life, but that's the way it goes.

    I stay in touch with a couple of people I knew in school, but I've lost touch with most of the people I spent a lot of time with then. Moving to Atlanta had a lot to do with it.

    I've had trouble reassembling the early years of my life and remembering exactly when certain things happened. It's getting a little clearer the more I think about it, but I have a hard time placing when we lived in Indianapolis and when we came back (without Dad). I can remember the place we lived when we were there as if I was just there yesterday, and I can remember things that happened as clearly as if I were standing there, but when they happened, I cant figure.

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    1. John, I think sometimes timing or place might have some effect on a haunting nature of a song. Some songs I might have heard frequently and didn't think much of it. Then I'll hear the song later and for some reason certain memories will flood my mind.

      Your memory sounds like mine. I might even be sure that something happened at some point in time only to find--usually by Google research that there is no way it could have happened then. This sense of forgetting is part of the reason I like writing my memoirs. Mine the memories while they are still easily accessible.

      Lee

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  6. There are many songs that take me back to a time in my life, and the memories are so vivid I can almost relive events. Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes not.

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    1. Patricia, I know what you're saying. Music has mostly happy associations for me, but there are some bad memories that I can be reminded of when hearing certain songs.

      Lee

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  7. Lee, I have a pleasant memory of one of your visits home somewhere about this time. There was a bunch of old friends gathered at Vernon's house, the old farm house next to Rockford that he shared with a couple of other people. You came in with one of the illusionists you were traveling with, and everyone was amazed by the magic tricks, especially the card tricks. TC was there and Tom Everett was also I think. So many of the old friends I used to hang with have passed on, and others have just vanished from my life. What ever happened to Vernon, Wendell Welch, and some of the others? Miss the old days!

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    1. Jack, Yes, I remember that visit. There were a whole bunch of friends as well as people I didn't know. I haven't heard from Wendell in years. Vernon I saw on my last visit. He retired from Rockford Mfg. this past summer and is enjoying his retirement. There aren't too many folks who I stay in contact with. I used to call somebody every weekend, but then that kind of stopped. Rarely does anyone call me. Mostly my old high school friend Marvin who you probably don't know. Forrest used to call me pretty regularly but it's been a while since I've heard from him other than on Facebook. If it weren't for Facebook I'd really lose track of what's going on in the lives of old friends.

      Lee

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  8. Gosh, there's always a song on my mind. I associate them with life; people, events and yes, memories. One song that haunts me, though I don't know why it would, is City of New Orleans. It makes me think I need to be going somewhere, or perhaps finishing something.
    In 1978 I was 20 and thought I knew where I was going. Sure am glad for that fork in the road ;-)

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    1. Diedre, funny how our life journeys can be diverted to places we never expected.

      Lee

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