"People smile and tell me I'm the lucky one"
Really, they tell me I’m living in the past.
Yes.
I’m re-living parts of the past I overlooked and threw away before I was mature enough to understand their value. Our modern age distresses me greatly. This is not the normal plaint of every middle-aged man who says “Things were better in my day.” And it isn’t merely and only nostalgia, though there’s of course some of that. We’re losing our institutions, our families, our friends, our society. Schools are pulping books written in anything other than Ingsoc.
The young aren’t merely amused by times and technologies that came before them. They are insouciant and contemptuous. There’s a striking disgust for the world before they were born. This is new, this is different.
We’re losing art and beauty. Specifically—and this can be, and has been, measured and demonstrated—we’re losing melody and harmony in music. What is called a “song” today is more likely to be an atonal percussion track accompanied by spoken word; aggressive spoken word, spit at the microphone.
It wasn’t this way always. As I reach back to my childhood to rebuild my record album collection, I’m remembering how very, very good popular music could be. And not so long ago. At my house, it’s yesterday once more.
Time was I thought I “hated” this song. The more frequently played versions from other artists never grabbed me.
But then, Anne Murray. Like Karen Carpenter, she has a voice from God. I actually stumbled on this song recently, having forgotten, or having never known, that she covered it.
It reminds me of who my mother might have been. When she was a young woman—a girl, really— poor and pregnant with me, she hoped for the things this song tells about. Mother was good with babies; I think she genuinely loved them. It was their maturation out of dollhood that she could not hack.
What’s old is new again. The song reminds me too of my sister. She was also a mother who stumbled too young. But she is a mother who righted her ship and gave her son what none of us had; a married, stable, mother and father. A home with love. Our family line won’t die in sorrow.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.
He will be like you and me, as free as a dove
Conceived in love
The sun is gonna shine above
I found several Anne Murray albums in the "album holder" of my mom's Zenith stereo console when we moved it to my daughter's apartment. We eventually gave the albums to my now daughter-in-law who covets old music albums for her vintage record player. She loves music that is, well, "musical". A ballerina and self-taught pianist, she loves music that "speaks to your soul".
And now I'm remembering my mom and the amazing voice she had. The nuns trained her well. My mom's voice was unmistakable during the singing of hymns at church. I miss her. You never know how or when you'll run across something that stirs up good memories. Thank you for writing this, for sharing parts of you, Josh.
Narcissistic mothers do tend to be good with babies and small children, from what I’ve read. My own experience with a borderline, narcissistic mother supported the theory, as well. The turn started happened when I turned 7... the age where children start breaking away from mom to explore their environment and get to know Dad. It got WAY worse when I started going through adolescence. It makes sense when you consider that narcissism cannot tolerate any difference, right? I wasn’t going to grow up to be just like HER, so I was a problem that needed to be fixed. Heaven forbid I be anything like my dad, lol. She used that as an insult when she was frustrated: “You’re just like your father!” (Yes, he was still around. He just wasn’t “allowed” to interact with me much. That marriage is it’s own story)
AAAAANYWAY... sorry, tangent.
I know it’s dark now, Josh. I get depressed about it too. Anyone with genuine emotional depth has got to be suffering right now. Meanwhile big, fake displays of histrionic nonsense are expected to be taken at face value. It’s a very unfunny joke. All that said, though, it *is* getting better. You know that, because you spend as much time online as I do. I’m not saying the work is done, or even that we can back off a little. I’m saying that people are waking up and they are confused and angry. They are looking for information now, and we have the opportunity to inform them. Already I’ve gained so much support in the small circles I’m in on FB, and there has been incredible gratitude from both strangers and friends (not the idiots that abandoned me, but I didn’t and don’t expect them to ever apologize or seek me out again, out of embarrassment. Fine with me).
It *is* happening. I know you feel it. Trust that feeling, but don’t stop doing the work. I’ll be right beside you. We can do this. We *are* doing it.