Conversations With Myself
I slept in until 10 a.m this morning. A bit like the old days when this was the hour that I rose. My justification is a) because I could b) it’s bloody cold c) there’s nothing important going on.
Now I’m having my coffee and listening to The Grateful Dead, at the same time as wondering why anyone could ever have become a “deadhead”.
I recalled that line in Don Henley’s 80s song “The Boys of Summer” … I saw a deadhead sticker on a cadillac. Why? Maybe it’s because they embodied memories of the late 1960s in Haight Ashbury, the so called Summer of Love.
Getting locked into past glories, which are often embellished anyway, is a big trap that deprives you of fully experiencing the present.
Having said that I still think it’s OK to have a music listening session to travel back down memory lane without getting stuck there.
It’s just a bit hard to remember all of the great music that has happened over the past 60 years or so. There has been so much.
Songs can act as triggers that bring back feelings, perceptions, attitudes. For example Roger Miller’s “King of the Road”. It must have been early 1965 when I was 12 going on 13.
“King of the Road” is a song written by country singer Roger Miller, who first recorded it in November 1964. The lyrics tell of the day-to-day life of a hobo who, despite being poor (a “man of means by no means”), revels in his freedom, describing himself humorously and cynically as the “king of the road”. It was Miller’s fifth single for Smash Records.
I just found that description on Wikipedia. But back then no such instant information existed, you had to find out the hard way but only if you were interested enough. I would have thought that it was earlier than 1965 that this song was around but Wikipedia has set me straight.
My memory is of a warm summer morning standing in the driveway of my grandmother’s house in Shepparton. The sounds of 3SR were wafting out of my Aunties kitchen window from her old Bakelite radio. She lived next door to my Grandma. White weatherboards, picket fence and the ever present smell of rotting fruit that you took for granted in the hot Shepparton summer. We were about to leave to come back home to Melbourne and I was about to enter Form 3 (year 9) in a few weeks. This was the year after I had discovered The Beatles.
An important year in my life, I was about to turn 13. My first year as a teenager.
The year when I learned a bastardised version of the guitar riff to Them’s “Baby Please Don’t Go” which earned me a gig in my first band “The Sands of Time”. It was a sliding door year for me.
But I have digressed. back to the early moments of 1964 on that warm January morning. The words of Roger Miller’s road song told me a story, they took me on an adventure, somewhere I hadn’t been before.
I hadn’t yet heard of Jack Kerouac or The Beat Generation, the hippies were still a twinkle in God’s eye, the concept of putting your finger out and travelling overnight in a stranger’s car to an unknown location was not yet a feasible . But here were some words set to music that took me somewhere. Conjuring up an exoticism that I could only dream of back then.
Hey, I just realised something. I have now listened to enough Grateful Dead (this morning) to realise what the fuss was all about. They weren’t great musicians but they did take you on a journey. Never quite knowing where you’ll end up.
Their jamming had a subliminal influence on me (back in the 60s) that still permeates my life.
It’s about communication and discovery. Like being in a new city full of back alleys, parks and new experiences. It doesn’t matter where you end up as long as the journey to get there is a great experience full of discovery and wonder.
This quality is part of my life. It has been rewarding but has also held me back. Well that’s a lie, I held myself back by not stopping long enough to focus and hone my skills. If I had the tools to build something, no matter how long it would last, that was enough for me. My life has been littered with temporary structures which lasted just long enough to enjoy them while I could. “Jamming” is hard to explain to somebody who hasn’t done it. It’s a bit like a rapper or poet making up words as he/she goes. It’s the moment of creation. It is unpredictable but also addictive.
That’s what my morning “ conversations with myself” are all about. I never know where I’m going to end up. From The Grateful Dead to a greater understanding of my whole life. That’s a journey that I never expected this morning.
