I feel like tomorrow can't come fast enough. And then the next day. As interesting and entertaining as the holidays tend to be for me, there is always a hump between when they end and when the real world begins again that I can barely stand. This year, it's all the more palpable, probably because after the impending end of the year blowout, I have nothing to return to. It's a roving feeling.
After seeing Hoarders and enduring a meta-application to my family and a weird self-evaluation, I feel more and more terrified everytime my dad starts up on one of this collections. Granted, they are just that, but since I accuse my parents of being obsessive in their own unique ways, it makes me cringe when one of them walks in the door and asks for help carrying in some of their treasures, most of which wind up going somewhere, but sizeable amount are tossed to the ranks of the garage.
Today was different. My pops came beeming through the front door, found me and proudly displayed an "Old and In the Way" record, circa 1975, brand new. For the Deadheads out there, this should perk some interest. They were a bluegrass supergroup with Jerry Garcia mackin' the banjo. It's nothing short of fantastic.
Again, not a huge fan of folk, or at least what it's become. But I do like real, authentic American music, and often times that means delta blues, Jazz, The Grateful Dead and Counting Crows. Not exclusively, but you get the picture.
I can't decide if I'm drawn to those sorts of tunes for the aesthetic, emotional or historical reasons, or just because it's chalk full of Americana, the one thing I can embrace as "me", but that is also unabashedly sharable, because, well, this is America. We take and share. The America of the Dead era was just that. Authentic, real America. Not the hyphenated subset it's become, which is fine, but is definitely a product of that pristine authenticity. It's a time when a middle aged man from Florida was paving the way for my prospective career. A time when the Supreme Court was shifting drastically in their decisions. A time when social cares were where they should be - NOW. As myopic as that seems, this moment is really all we have, and a lot of thought has gone into establishing that.
All said and done, and ignoring the fact that I wasn't even around on a genetic level back then (I think my pop was in his late teens in the sixties, twenties throughout the seventies, so I was gettin' started at least), it was an unapologetic time. As free flowing as it was structured, directed and purposeful as it was carefree.
Robert Hunter does an idyllic job illustrating this. After reading Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" as my assigned after school re-read, I picked up "A Box of Rain", which has all of Hunter's work from the sixties to the nineties, when it was published. All I can say is wow. This guy knew his American folklore and history as well as he knew his way around the language.
I've also stumbled across David Dodd's awesome doctoral project (I think) of annotating the Dead and their lyrics.
These sorts of things give this overwhelming feeling of just how tremendous and rich the music of the Hunter/Garcia groups are*. It explains why I feel an immediate nostalgia while listening to songs I may not be very familiar with and probably don't even have a specific memory to attach them to. They just feel right, feel wearable.
*(may not be fair to call them that, but the Dead, New Riders, Old and In the Way barely wouldn't be what they were without Hunter and Garcia. Plus it's my blog. [blawg? eh don't think I've earned that yet])
Paradoxically, that same instant nostalgia triggered some regret last night. I was enjoying a fire in the new firepit, thinking about the mental burr of the next week or so, and I thought about this summer, when I really started getting into the Dead. I had a mix of Old Crow Medicine Show, The Dead, and the Jayhawks I would play on my way out the inlet where my friend moored the boat we learned to sail in the course of a week. I also spent a few nights with an old friend, or more appropriately, "rider", who came along on the only successful voyages we sailed (that maybe self-fulfilling), that made me wander into a "what if.." state of mind. Such as, "What if when we were putting a floor on the boat I...", "What if I went to that concert...", "What if instead of speaking slyly and sarcastically, then vanishing, I actually said how I felt..", and probably the worst:
"What if it's not too late?"
While I'm usually working in an "if/then" sort of logic, it always sucks when "either/or" sneaks in; when things go from linear to disjointed.
This is hard to talk about abstractly, which is the easiest way to stay impersonal, but since it is something personal, I guess I'll let the veil slip here. Sort of. Lets get specific, and lets call her Melinda.
Melinda is a girl I knew from high school. She and I exchanged a few words, not enough to solidfy anything but enough to let both of us know something was there. Some tension. A pull. Problem is, in my seventeen year old mind, is that she was a few years younger, and I would be heading away to college. After a short while with the future in mind, that tension was introduced just enough slack to stay taut but not break. Years pass, Melidna graduates, and I decide not to drop out of college to become an attorney, subsequently and ironically stop thinking about the future too much after that, and we find ourselves at a party back in our hometown. We get together. The next couple of weeks is getting together, but over the span of long drives and few shufflings of the truth. I decided something was wrong, she didn't agree; at least on the wrongness. A few years after that, our paths cross again; being from a relatively small town, we have a lot of mutual friends, and I obviously have some making up to do, if for nothing else, just to keep things from feeling awkward. We wind up spending a lot of time together this past summer, time that I really enjoyed, and would frequently neglect to study for the LSAT or pursue other endeavors. The past few months, we happened to get together a couple of times, but the ratio of face time to ignored calls (on my part, mind you) is that of a poorly funded state university's student to faculty numbers. I've since moved home, and she's since moved on to someone else, someone with an Western European accent. I've since involved myself a little more deeply in a relationship with someone else, one that I've since ended for future considerations...notwithstanding the irony there, the consideration's are ascetic, though maybe that's how the others started before turning selfish.
That's where I am. Last night, I really wanted what I had this past early summer. It was authentic, carefree but directed. It was everything I've ever wanted; instantly meaningful and nostalgic. But sadly enough, now teeming with regret, those feelings includes a small glimmer of something I'll never have, even if I haven't quite figured out what the little flickering desire is. And while I've decided that sitting around a fire always results in thinking about/talking about women (not in my case, but maybe men) and matters of the heart, last night was something different. It wasn't just thinking about Melinda, it was thinking about an us that has perpetually existed, but never really will.
So regret. It's a funny thing. For me, and I'm sure for other people, it doesn't mean something I would do differently. It doesn't mean turning back the clock and changing time. It means that I see a decision I've made and instead of accepting it as something that's past, I let my mind wander down the path of history towards the unknown. It's really like a vessel for being more mindful of what's happening to me now. Of taking my recent history, and instead of wanting to expunge it, applying it. The thing is, it really aches, in both a good and a bad way. Ache's because hindsight is 20/20, and of course I'm only most poignantly remembering the good and filtering the bad, but also because the more the I think about it, the only factor that doesn't work in the Melinda equation and every other equation I started but never finished this summer, is me.
I've been listening to the first couple of tunes on side II of "American Beauty" religiously today. They sound like a perfect movement for me right now. And reading David Dodd's site annotations sends shivers down my spine.
-----
"Ripple"
If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung
Would you hear my voice come through the music
Would you hold it near as it were your own?
It's a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken
Perhaps they're better left unsung
I don't know, don't really care
Let there be songs to fill the air
Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow
Reach out your hand if your cup be empty
If your cup is full may it be again
Let it be known there is a fountain
That was not made by the hands of men
There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone
Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow
You who choose to lead must follow
But if you fall you fall alone
If you should stand then who's to guide you?
If I knew the way I would take you home
---
"Broke-down Palace"
Fare you well, my honey.
Fare you well, my only true one.
All the birds that were singing
Have flown except you alone.
Goin' to leave this Broke-down Palace.
On my hands and my knees I will roll, roll, roll.
Make myself a bed by the waterside.
In my time - in my time - I will roll, roll, roll.
In a bed, in a bed
By the waterside I will lay my head;
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul.
River gonna take me
Sing me sweet and sleepy
Sing me sweet and sleepy
all the way back back home
It's a far gone lullaby
sung many years ago
Mama, Mama, many worlds I've come
since I first left home
Goin' home, goin' home
by the waterside I will rest my bones
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul
Goin' to plant a weeping willow
On the banks green edge it will grow grow grow
Sing a lullaby beside the water
Lovers come and go - the river roll roll roll
Fare you well, fare you well;
I love you more than words can tell.
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul
---
I wonder how much I've hoarded in my mind. How many collections that are an abundance of filth and waste. How many moments that would otherwise be vacuous without a song sparking them up, a brush of a breeze bringing out the best of a time I was blowing through. Without a Melinda. I'm usually both lauded and slightly scorned for how well my memory works; names, places, events, jobs, interests, pursuits. Dates. Titles. It's a great tool for socializing, but how useful is a memory for someone with instant pasts, someone who is falling into a pattern of establishing himself and then disappearing, and then reappearing again as if it's only some challenge and not a real life?
Then again, maybe the annotation of my life has some real worth. And if not on a tangible level when I start lawyering, then at least in my day to day behavior. After all, I wonder how many memories are actually momentous and merit this regret. I mean that in a way that if i can better myself just a little, actually use regret instead of rolling around in it like a hurricane of my past, then maybe these quagmires of conflictingly complimentary feelings are worth it.
This whole entry feels lofty, and those questions were a failed attempt at coming in for a landing.
Regret. It is a funny thing.
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