Blame Liverpool
the first Beatles song i heard, ever, was "I Want To Hold Your Hand"... from the back seat, where children reside. through a one-speaker dashboard radio, as those archaic soundboard-engineer gods had intended.
we were on a rescue mission to retrieve a Renault Gordini in Fairfax, Virginia.
there's more to this story.
when life reaches its lowest ebb, when all else fails, there's always music. tucked away in a drawer is an embroidered patch that i found, years ago, stitched with the logo "Riddim Is Life". it might be Jamaican patois, but it still means the same thing that the old Hippie platitude reiterated: "Music gets you through times of no money better than money gets you through times of no music". but, more than that.
(there's a life lesson to be learned in the most innocuous things. i am no "hippie", either. "hippie", to me, means expecting somebody else to get you high... sponging off of others because "we're all brothers, man"... comments like "there is no other music" from repugnant Big-Chill-Grateful-Dead-obsessive types.
most of those hippies are Conservatives, now, if that's any illustration.)
while not elaborating on the downward spiral that had been my path for the past year, i've let a lot of things go that are important to me. the stack of CDs. writing. drawing. playing an instrument. feeling warm skin against me. leaving these four walls. catching up on my NetFlix movies that gather dust, expensively.
but, last Saturday, collapsing after another foray of clearing out the home place, i flipped on the TV. Everton vs. Bolton. i'd even ignored English football, my only other sports obsession outside of Formula 1, up until that point.
"What the Hell", i thought.. "the Beatles favored Everton." it was the "other" Liverpool home team. two hours "wasted" wouldn't kill me.
and, it was fun to watch. the English, as reserved a culture as they can be, go apeshit at football matches. i'll take a stadium of spontaneous chants sung in unison over "Terrible Towels" any day (sorry, Pam!).
after the final result, i pondered turning the set off... when i remembered that amongst those dusty NetFlix movies sat "The Beatles First US Visit". in, it went.
then, it became apparent that this was a serendipitous moment: as the BOAC 707 hit the New York tarmac, the time signature "February 7th, 1964" flashed onscreen.
today. forty-five years ago.
two days hence, at that time, my brother and i were riveted in front of the tiny TV set in front of the picture window of our boyhood home... the one that only got three network channels. three feet from the screen on the floor, bathed in black&white cathode-ray tube radiation. ruining not just our eyes, as it turned out, courtesy of the Ed Sullivan Show on CBS. their first ever televised appearance in America.
everything was different: the hair. the humor. the harmonies. the accents. the songcraft. the pandemonium. the Air.
and, Lo, There Were Guitars: the clarion call to strummers, everywhere, magnified by VOX amplifiers.
Jamaicans have a saying for this: "As the twig is bent, so the tree inclines". it was a pivotal moment for two red dirt Virginia children. the lens by which the world was viewed was re-focused. the world got bigger. everything, even to new lives, became new. possibilities, unlimited. talent, verified.
(this admittance dates me, as if i care. you can't deny a life-altering moment.)
because possibilities are unlimited, if your eyes are opened to the evidence.
thank you, John, Paul, George... and not less, Ringo.
four middle class guys reminded the world that the world went on, months after the President was assassinated. and it got better, if you exert the effort. effort, if exercised, is prodigious.
major 7th chords didn't hurt, either.
