Category: Keith Richards

Kiss it Goodbye

~ thoughtsatlarge ~ Leave a comment

The youth of today, and for this discussion, this includes anyone who’s never held their favorite music in their hand (album, 8-track, cassette, CD), don’t understand how recorded music was appreciated in the time before the internet and streaming. I grew up in the age of mixtapes which involved recording songs from the radio (remember radio?) with the deft dexterity of a neurosurgeon. And…hit…..Play AND Record at the same moment! Who didn’t feel like Casey Casum when they nailed it?

My musical education is partly due to the Columbia House ten cassettes for a penny club we badgered our parents into joining. Research and hard decisions in my youth involved selecting my three-item allotment from Columbia House and being honest on my MLB All-Star selection ballot (and not voting for every Cincinnati Red nominated).  I mention music because one of the few albums we had growing up was Hotel California by the Eagles. To be fair, my parents also had Rubber Soul and Led Zeppelin IV on vinyl and Sgt Pepper on 8-track. My sister was/is an Eagles fanatic (along with a certifiably insane Keith Richards fanboy). I can’t tell you how many times we listened to Hotel California. One of the songs I loved was The Last Resort. Being born and raised in Rhode Island, I was thrilled that music royalty was singing about my home, Rhode Island. And because I knew the immigrant stories of my family and those of most families I knew, the song’s opening verse touched me:

She came from Providence

One in Rhode Island

Where the old world shadows hang

Heavy in the air

The song, written by Glen Frey and Don Henley, describes man’s ugly takeover of nature’s pristine beauty. Specifically, California, and the migration of people searching for a new beginning in a “new” land.

She packed her hopes and dreams

Like a refugee

Just as her father came across the sea

She heard about a place

People were smiling

They spoke about the red man’s way

And how they loved the land

            They came from everywhere

To the Great Divide

Seeking a place to stand

Or a place to hide

Word spreads about such places, and the throngs of people descend on it like locusts eating everything in their path.

Down in the crowded bars

Out for a good time

Can’t wait to tell you all

What it’s like up there

They called it paradise

I don’t know why

Somebody laid the mountains low

While the town got high

And this migration, like wildfire, doesn’t stop until it hits the ocean.

Then the chilly winds blew down

Across the desert

Through the canyons of the coast

To the Malibu

Where the pretty people play

Hungry for power

To light their neon way

Give them things to do

Some rich men came and raped the land

Nobody caught ’em

Put up a bunch of ugly boxes

And Jesus people bought ’em

And they called it paradise

The place to be

They watched the hazy sun

Sinking in the sea

And here’s where the story becomes painful. In the age before the internet and before you had lyrics to every song seconds away on your cell phone, we sang what we heard or misheard. The internet is filled with videos of people singing incorrect lyrics. Yes, it’s funny now! But before you could access the lyrics, you heard what you heard and belted it out as best you could. The next two verses always confused me. I should say I felt stupid not understanding what they were referencing. I assumed “La Hina” was a town in California. It wasn’t until years later that I learned Lahaina is a town on the island of Maui in Hawaii.

You can leave it all behind

Sail to Lahaina

Just like the missionaries did

So many years ago

They even brought a neon sign

“Jesus is coming”

Brought the white man’s burden down

Brought the white man’s reign

Before COVID-19 shut down society, and before masks and vaccines began to pull those who cared about their families and neighbors out of the pandemic abyss, my wife and I went on our honeymoon to Hawaii. We stayed in Oahu and Maui. We rented a Jeep Wrangler on Maui and, on our last day, drove across the island to Lahaina. I wanted a picture of a sign with Lahaina on it to send to my sister, an ode to our childhood listening to the Eagles. We walked Front Street, marveled at the city block-sized banyan tree, bought cookies at the Honolulu Cookie Company store, shopped at the Outlets of Maui, and ate dinner as the sun sank into the sea at the Waikiki Brewing Company. As we sat there waiting for dinner to be served, across the street, we saw the most incredible sunset I’ve ever seen.

I grew up in a tourist town, Newport, RI. And as much as I hated the traffic and the crowds of pretty people, I also knew their money was the economy’s lifeblood. When I heard about the wildfires whipping across Hawaii, and first heard Lahaina mentioned, I could only hope the town would be spared. The pandemic was savage to many industries, with tourism among the hardest hit. In addition to the catastrophic human toll the virus exacted, we all know of restaurants and stores that also did not survive. To have a wildfire threaten the fragile economy of Lahaina seemed as cruel as it was unfair. And then I saw the photos.

Nothing of what I remember exists any longer. It’s all gone. As of this writing, eighty people have lost their lives, with more expected as homes reduced to ash are searched. Front Street is a warzone of burned-out cars beside the mangled remains of homes and businesses. The banyan tree was scorched and may not survive. The Honolulu Cookie Company, the Outlets of Maui, and the Waikiki Brewing Company not only burned to the ground, but with the utter devastation and destroyed infrastructure, people do not yet know if their friends and coworkers survived. My heart breaks for everyone there. Hell came to Lahaina this week and took everything.

Climate change is real. Humans as a contributing factor is undeniable. Warnings of tipping points have been ignored. Water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico exceed 100 degrees in some areas. We have had the hottest weather ever recorded, worldwide. And yet, we continue to ignore the issue and marvel at the consequences with willful ignorance and feigned confusion.

The last four verses of the song, without mentioning it, describe climate change and our greedy abdication of responsibility. However, instead of a coastline, when you read these last verses below, consider they are singing about planet Earth.

Who will provide the grand design?

What is yours and what is mine?

‘Cause there is no more new frontier

We have got to make it here

We satisfy our endless needs

And justify our bloody deeds

In the name of destiny

And in the name of God

And you can see them there

On Sunday morning

Stand up and sing about

What it’s like up there

They call it paradise

I don’t know why

You call someplace paradise

Kiss it goodbye

There are no new frontiers. We have got to make it here.

Or kiss it goodbye.

Fighting Eternal Oblivion with Squiggles and Cheese

~ thoughtsatlarge ~ 1 Comment

As I write this, I can watch the gel ink dry behind each subsequent word. Dried into the paper, permanently a part of the wood fiber. Immortal, eternal as long as the paper exists. Put the paper in a vault, and the words live forever. There they will remain preserved, filed, recorded, and likely unread.

The same can be said of humans. As the ink dries, we move on. The relentless marching on of time. Relentless. Never ending, never pausing, never caring. Once the ink dries, it is done. It is the past. It is our past. Our memories. We are the vault. And our vault, memories, and existence exist only as long as anyone who experienced something with us or heard a story about us exists. Once we are gone and those who recall us are gone, so are our memories, the ink, the paper, and the vault. That’s life. Our life. Everyone’s life.

There will come a day when the very thought of us as individuals will be lost. There will be a day when the last person who remembers you or recalls a story about you recalls it for the last time. You will be lost to eternal oblivion. Sure, there are individuals whose memory transcends time. Shakespeare, Caesar, Keith Richards, but for most of us, we will be lost to time, just a number in the ever-expanding pile of humans that once existed.

Is there a way to combat this eternal oblivion? Or is this simply an exercise of someone who just celebrated a birthday and is reminded that the road before him is shorter than the view in the rearview mirror? And, let me add that the road before him is neither clear nor guaranteed.

Clifton Fadiman said, “A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may be naïve, it may be over-sophisticated. Yet it remains cheese, milk’s leap toward immortality.” Creativity (the arts) is our antidote, our cheese. Write a book, and it remains available forever. The internet is the newer, better Library of Alexandria. Paint something, sculpt something, and it exists long after you perish.

In episode eleven of Cosmos, Carl Sagan said something I’ll never forget, “What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

Another favorite of mine, again, capable of stringing together words far better than I’ll ever dream of, Oscar Wilde said, “All art is immortal. For emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of art, and emotion for the sake of action is the aim of life.”

So, create! Rabindranath Tagore said, “The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.” So, plant a tree! Paint a picture! Write a story! Write your story! Eternal oblivion awaits us. Leave something behind that outlives you, outlives the memory of the last person to recall you. Will you be remembered for it? Maybe. Maybe not. However, your creation will endure.

As the ink dries on that last word, I wonder if anyone will ever read this. I wonder if anyone will ever remember it if they did read it. Create, people! Our ink is drying!