At 15, there's a sadness that is always just there. There are good times, too -- random moments of thrill. Then there's loneliness -- at 15 I moved from New Hampshire to Texas, a continent away from any friend. There are 1,000 reasons for the mid-teen melancholy, but I think it's mainly the dying of the last vestiges of childhood, that fall away in pieces like glaciers calving in the arctic. Each piece is beautiful, and we mourn them as they fall, mystified that they don't quite attach anymore.
The only suture to these open wounds is music. (I don't know what kids did before records.)
For me, what I did in the Fall/fall of 1975 is come home from school, walk into our trailer in Humble Texas, lay down on the brown shag carpet, and put on the album "Souvenirs" by Dan Fogelberg.
My favorites around those times were Hotel California, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Wheel In The Sky. I used to get records from the public library (remember those?) and make cassettes and listen on headphones so I could hear everything. My how times have changed...
ReplyDeleteI see we really have to get back to being playful as we were when we were kids. That's where the real joy is I think.
Thanks for taking us back in time for a moment John.
I spent the summer of '77 living in a spiritual community with my brother, and being a cast member in a summer stock theater in Ohio. I used my brother's car, and the only two cassettes he had were Hotel California, and Steve Miller's "Fly Like an Eagle." I played them to shreds, and still particularly like the songs that weren't hits on those: Pretty Maids All In a Row, The Last Resort, Wild Mountain Honey, Mercury... Thanks for posting!
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