The Martin, Part 2

When days go by and I don't do anything, I guess one of the things I don't do is make my daily journal entry. This is usually just a few basic lines about my mundane retired life. Oh it was really disco when I was a jet pilot! So when I have to bring the journal up to date because it's a week behind, well it's embarrassing for two reasons: one, I can't remember what I did yesterday, let alone 5 or 6 days ago! two, I realize I really haven't done anything...much...at...all.

Once a month or so I get the "muse" instead of the "blues". Or maybe more accurately, I get the muse because of the blues. And what happens is I start out receding into a shell. Hiding in my room...safe within my womb...I touch no one and no one touches me....well actually, I do touch myself. I was in that afterglow of that house concert I told you about and I was trying to suggest a song to Victoria Vox for a cover via a fan letter. It was an old Niel Young song "Lotta Love"....you remember. It was a "one hit wonder" for Nicolette Larson and the album was simply called Nicolette. So I surfed around YouTube and I wrote the fan letter. But in the process I rediscovered a new favorite song that just hit me like a "bolt out of the blues". It wasn't "Lotta Love". It was a Nicolette song called "Last in Love". I went nuts liking the song. When I found her live version of it, recorded at the "Roxy" with this super star keyboard guy, Bill Payne, it was like a religious experience. It was from 1979 and the memories came flooding back. I had two romances going, one in DC which was big. A true love I guess. The other in Detroit which was small. A fling I guess. Both these girls constantly played this Nicolette album, and everybody was playing it. This was exactly the time that I bought the Martin guitar in Ypsilanti. I was beginning my airline career and I was thirty years old. So I'm listening to this Billy Payne version and I'm remembering that Nicolette fell into depression and addiction, as so many did back then and she sang so pretty and I had forgotten all about it and I just started tearing up and I can't explain it.

My brother has a friend who has written a book about Wagner, the Opera guy. The Gist of his book promotes the idea that emotions brought forth in the arts are exactly the same as in religion. The same brain chemicals, hormones, etc. He claims in the book that Wagner is saying this as a main theme through all his works.

So. Okay. I have a new favorite song. "Last in Love". It will be perfect for YouTube. It's unknown and forgotten, yet it's an oldie that some will remember fondly. Perfect right? Wrong. So wrong. After a little research I find out that George Strait, the King of Country, is so all over this song that everybody on YouTube thinks he wrote it. He put it in a movie in 1992. A smarmy redneck superficial sentimental thing called "Pure Country". He had the song on the charts too. So now I sort of don't want to put the song on YouTube. And I did all that work falling in love with the song. If you change the way you think about something....the thing you are thinking about changes. :::::+:::::

That's a cool way to just end this post. But allow me a tiny epilogue. When I listened to the George Strait version on YouTube, I must admit it was very well done. He didn't sell out the song into hee- haw land. It was very nicely sung and the lyrics were exactly like the author wrote them. The author by the way is JD Souther. Remember "You're Only Lonely"?. So at least I have a new favorite song writer. I havn't been writing in the journal every day, but I have been picking up the Martin every day. But it will only play one song. LLITTY :::::+:::::