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Song Challenge: Day 30

From MJ Cullinane’s Urban Crow Oracle deck.

Today’s challenge–the last one!–is “a song that reminds you of yourself.” I’ve said Dan Fogelberg’s song “Scarecrow’s Dream” is my theme song since the first time I lay in front of the stereo and listened to the words in the late 1970s. In comments under this video on YouTube, someone says, “Thank you, kind spirit, for all of your wise words.” I will forever now think of Dan Fogelberg as “kind spirit.” And I, too, thank him.

Thank you, too, for sticking with me for the month, especially when/if you commented or shared your own artists and songs for the challenges. If I helped you remember some favorites of your own, I’m glad.

Seldom seen
A scarecrow’s dream
I hang in the hopes of replacement
Castles tall
I built them all
But I dream that I’m trapped in
The basement.
And if you ever hear me calling out
And if you’ve been by paupers crowned
Between the worlds of men and make-believe
I can be found.
Plans I’ve made
A masquerade
Fading in fear of the coming day
Heroes’ tales
Like nightingales
Wrestle the wind as they run away.
And if you ever hear them calling out
And if you’ve been by paupers crowned
Between the worlds of men and make-believe
I can be found.
Garden gate
An empty plate
Waiting for someone to come and fill
Scarecrow’s dreams
Like frozen streams
Thirst for the fall
But they’re running still.
And if you ever hear me calling out
And if you’ve been by paupers crowned
Between the worlds of men and make-believe
I can be found.

Song Challenge: Day 29

Today’s song challenge is “a song someone sang to you once.” How about sang to me too many times to count? If I was in a bad mood or just feeling playful, and Riley was there with his guitar, I made the same request: “Play ‘Rocky Raccoon,’ please!” I’ve shared on here before how one time when I made that request, he gave me a reproachful look.

If I’ve never shared this before, it’s a picture from one of our high school yearbooks. I don’t have that yearbook, but Lynne does. I snapped a photo with my camera phone when I was at Half-Acre Wood a couple of years ago. Riley in his 1950s era raccoon coat.

Riley and other musicians were doing a tribute in a local bar to John Lennon in December 1980, days after the former Beatle was murdered. As much as everyone there loved playing and hearing the music, there was such a pervasive feeling of sadness among us. I couldn’t take it anymore and mouthed my request: “Rocky Raccoon.”

“That’s a McCartney song,” he answered off mic, not wanting to embarrass me.

“I know,” I said. “Please play it anyway. For me.”

He couldn’t refuse me. I don’t know about anyone else in the bar, but hearing Riley play and sing a song that always made me laugh was what I needed to keep my equilibrium that night. Whether or not John Lennon liked the song, as he once told us in a different song, Whatever gets you thru the night/It’s all right, it’s all right.

I thank Riley, always, for all the days and nights he got me through with his music and poetry, all the other artists’ music he introduced me to, his friendship and love, for sometimes testing me almost to the ends of my patience and endurance, his emotional support during my hardest times, and his ability to make me laugh.

In 2022, on the 42nd anniversary of John Lennon’s death, a group of musicians and fans gathered at the Strawberry Fields/Imagine memorial in Central Park, and there’s a video of them doing the song. I guess I’m not the only one. =)

Here’s the album version by the Beatles.

Song Challenge: Day 28

Today’s song challenge is “a song by an artist whose voice you love.” I was watching some television show one night a long time ago–I mean like 1970s or 1980s long time–I feel like it could have been a cop show–and they played Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me.” Even though the song was already familiar to me, maybe because of the show’s plot or the scene they showed while it played, who knows, it grabbed my attention that night. Despite all those other details having vanished, I’ve never forgotten how the song felt new and became a favorite from that point on.

I can’t say anything better about Sam Cooke’s voice than this quote from Wikipedia: Cooke is widely considered one of the greatest singers and most accomplished vocalists of all time. His incredibly pure tenor voice was big, velvety and expansive, with an instantly recognizable tone. His pitch was remarkable, and his manner of singing was effortlessly soulful. He could go as high as high C without losing purity or volume, and his upper mid-range was coated in a unique rasp. His vocal style was very adaptable, adopting a rather classical sound on jazz and pop songs while maintaining his trademark stylistic soulful hold on R&B, gospel, and soul music.

Song Challenge: Day 27

Today’s song challenge is “a song that breaks your heart.” For me, that song is the Carole King composition “You’ve Got a Friend.” I own it by at least three artists, and I no longer listen to it. There’s nothing at all wrong with the song; it’s as beautiful to me as it ever was. But a moment came in my life when hearing “You’ve Got a Friend” evoked a lyric from a different song, the Jackson Browne composition “These Days”: Please don’t confront me with my failures/I had not forgotten them.

I’m not linking to either song. I had a great birthday yesterday, and today I’d like to pick up where I was in my manuscript. I don’t want to be derailed by melancholy.

On a lighter note, in February, I received “The Beatles Coloring Book” from Nurse Lisa in Iowa. Below are a series of photos showing the evolution of the first picture I colored from it and finally finished this week (working on it sporadically for the last five-plus weeks).

The cover of the Beatles’ Abbey Road album.

The cover of the coloring book Lisa sent.

My first coloring included the title and the Volkswagen.

Finished page!

Framed and hanging on the wall in the writing sanctuary, a little birthday gift to myself yesterday.

When I wrote A Coventry Wedding, I scattered Easter eggs (an “Easter egg” is defined as “a little extra something that authors hide in their books for readers to find”) throughout the book. In A Coventry Wedding, the Easter eggs were allusions to Beatles’ lyrics meant as gifts for Riley to find when he read the novel. Sadly, Riley died before the book’s release, five months before my mother died in 2008. The novel came out later than scheduled because the editor gave me an extension so I could focus on Mother during her final months while I was also grieving Riley’s loss. It doesn’t require a therapist to recognize that I haven’t tried to get another full-length work of fiction published since 2009 or that it took me ten years to even begin writing novels again.

Some of the Easter eggs in A Coventry Wedding alluded to songs on Abbey Road. Off the top of my head, those include “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window” and “Mean Mr. Mustard.” From that album, here’s my deliberately-chosen song “Carry That Weight” (in which the Beatles sample another song from Abbey Road, “You Never Give Me Your Money”). All kinds of writers have a little fun with their work sometimes. In fact, I’ve just written a scene with a character analyzing Easter eggs in a screenwriter’s music video.

Tiny Tuesday and Song Challenge: Day 26

A pair of tiny heart-shaped ruby earrings Tom gave me on some occasion probably in the 1990s.

Here I am, celebrating another turn around the sun today, and the song challenge is “a song that makes you think of falling in love.”

At my birthday party many years ago, a joint event with two other women with birthdays that same week and an open invitation to a horde of friends and acquaintances, theirs, mine, and ours, I danced for the first time with a man I’d only recently met. He seemed like one of the good guys, but I was coming off one of the worst years of my life, with terrible losses in my family, a broken relationship, some friend betrayals, and the consequences of many, many bad choices and bad judgments on my part. The last thing I wanted or needed was a relationship with a man, no matter how nice he was. I needed to deal with my messy life and make hard decisions about what to do next.

Two years later, I’d marry that good guy, and a few months after that, we would move to Houston. We’ve had quite a life together–the good, the bad, and the ridiculous–and I can’t imagine celebrating all the birthdays since I met him with anyone else.

I think Fleetwood Mac’s “Crystal” is the first song Tom and I danced to at my birthday party that night. He may remember differently–that’s just part of having a few decades together. =)

ETA: Coming back after the fact because of the dreams I had last night–so vivid that after the dream began, I woke up briefly, went back to sleep immediately, and the same dream picked up where it left off. It was about a key person in my life story and evoked an array of memories and feelings. Mostly it reminded me that sometimes it’s good not to get what we think we want and that we–I–need to acknowledge, to myself, the better things about my nature instead of being hard on myself for my mistakes and flaws.

Mood: Monday and Song Challenge: Day 25

Art posted here previously was George Michael Singer, acrylics and mixed media on canvas, 2018, by artist Melanie D.

When Jim was here, we talked about the WHAM documentary that’s airing on Netflix. I haven’t seen it, though it’s one of the things I intend to watch.

Today’s song challenge is “a song you like by an artist no longer living.” It was a shock when George Michael died on Christmas Day 2016–too young at 53. In my music television watching heyday, a video with George Michael would stop me in my tracks. I’ve done a lot of research about the evolution of music videos from the 1960s forward (why else? for the Neverending Saga) though of course, they weren’t called “videos” then and were usually shot on 35mm film even after video tape came into existence and “music videos” became part of the common vernacular. George Michael’s videos were art, and I remember them well.

I also haven’t watched The Super Models on Apple TV+, but the holdup on that one for me is that it features the female models who were in George Michael’s “Freedom” video: Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington. However, Tatjana Patitz, born on this date, March 25, 1966, in Hamburg Germany, was also in the “Freedom” video, died last year in January, and isn’t part of the documentary. Because of the video, she became my favorite of the group, so I haven’t had the heart to watch it yet.

Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington, and Cindy Crawford

Why doesn’t George Michael appear in the video? He told MTV, “I made decisions a couple years ago to change the way my career was going and my life was going by not appearing in the videos, by not being interviewed, by not doing press. Basically, letting my music kind of do what it’s going to do.”

We don’t see him, but his presence still dominates the video (also, probably a lot of people gasped when his leather jacket gets set on fire).

Button Sunday and Song Challenge: Day 24

Today’s song challenge is “a song by a band you wish were still together.” It became impossible that Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young could reunite after David Crosby died, but even before, it was an unrealistic idea. There were too many fractured relationships among them for it to happen. I chose the button for their album So Far deliberately because it includes what I think are two key songs from a certain time in the band’s evolution. Here’s the full cover from my drowned album.

Graham Nash’s “Teach Your Children,” an admonition for parents and children to love each other despite their differences, was on the March 1970 release of their album Déjà Vu. Nash said he wrote it because of his complicated relationship with his father, and is quoted as saying, “The idea is that you write something so personal that every single person on the planet can relate to it.” Young wasn’t present in the studio when Nash taught the song to the others and they recorded it.

After Déjà Vu’s release, as “Teach Your Children” was moving up the charts, the Kent State shooting took place on May 4, inspiring Neil Young to write “Ohio.” To Nash, this song may have seemed like the consequences when the wisdom of “Teach Your Children” went unheeded. The band rushed “Ohio’s” release as a single, and it, too, climbed the charts.

David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young created an impressive body of work as individuals, as members of CSN&Y, and as members of other bands, and for me, the four together created a voice for any turbulent time and every generation. A Stephen Stills quote from last year sometimes haunts me: “Part of me misses David Crosby dreadfully. Part of me thinks he got out of here just in time.”

ETA: For my own personal reference, I’m linking to an account of Déjà Vu’s cover photo because it shows how research persistence really pays off!

Song Challenge: Day 23

I’ve long said that we would make our lives so much easier and better if we could learn to say two phrases and mean them: “I was wrong,” and “I’m sorry.” Sometimes both of them together. Today’s challenge is “a song you think everybody should listen to.” I’m not sure there’s any Elton John hit that hasn’t been heard everywhere, but “Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word” makes me think of those two simple yet rare phrases. When I hear it, it takes me back to certain relationships, certain endings, certain missed opportunities. It also reminds me of times one or both of those two phrases either made things right or started a path to healing. Old Woman Tip: If you waited too late–you didn’t. You might not be able to say it to the person you wish you could tell, but say it out loud anyway to put that kindness out there. You’ll feel it for yourself, too. And if someone has the courage to say those words to you, be as gracious as you can be. I’ve always been a believer in Alexander Pope’s, “To err is human; to forgive, divine.”

Photo Friday, No. 901, and Song Challenge: Day 22

Current Photo Friday theme: Color

Happy birthday to my friend Lisa K, she of so many talents (she sings! she paints! she’s a computer wizard! she’s funny! she’s smart!), a tiny dynamo packaged inside a beautiful smile, mesmerizing green eyes, and striking red hair. I’m dedicating today’s song challenge to her.

The theme is “a song that moves you forward.” It’s time I showed the Foo Fighters some love and also reminded myself that “Something From Nothing” expresses how the creative spark and process are often motivated by an underlying rage. Use it; don’t let it drag you down.

Song Challenge: Day 21

Today’s song challenge is “a song you like with a person’s name in the title.” Smokie, a British rock band, had a hit with the song “Living Next Door To Alice” in 1976. It was a cover of the song written by an Australian band named New World, who released it in 1972, but it was a flop for them. (The original songwriters said they were inspired by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show’s song “Sylvia’s Mother,” so let me give a shoutout to Alice and Sylvia for their place in rock-and-roll history.)

Smokie’s version did well, and though it charted in the U.S., I never heard it. I discovered it thanks to a reference in “The Life of Sharks,” a comic strip I follow on Instagram. The strip’s reference, however, was to the second version done by Smokie in the 1995 remake.

Explanation: Over time, when the band performed the song, it became a chance for the audience to shout back at them, “Alice? Who the fuck is Alice?”

That’s become a phrase I sometimes mutter to myself when I’m confused about something, so I share with you the second version. There are videos of the original (without the chant-back) and other chant-back videos on YouTube, but this remastered version is the one I like for its sound quality. May you come to appreciate Alice as I do.