Pecking at the keyboard
I was in the Walgreens just now, and I heard "Patience". Yeah, ol' Guns & Roses, back from the days of high school and college.
Is there anything more hackneyed than mulling over memories after hearing a song? Maybe not. But making excuses for it is as bad, or worse. Such memories happen, and if musing over them is nothing new, it's at least not a lie. Each memory or thought like this has a short enough life in the mind of the person who carries it; and communicating such thoughts won't prolong them longer than they deserve to survive.
An old friend of mine sang this song at his wedding, to his wife. It was a simple little private ceremony, in his parents' house. Everyone there talked about how beautiful it was. He did have a fine voice. The song itself now makes me sad in a way that few do. After washing out of the Marines in what I think was his last real attempt to teach himself some discipline, he'd gotten married for the wrong reasons, and too young, and was younger emotionally -- and by that I mean less mature -- even than in age. He got divorced fairly soon, nastily, and came to ridicule his ex-wife, the mother of their son. She was far from blameless, but the fault was shared. His parents ended up adopting his son, and he moved on and more or less disappeared. His parents were even in the local paper years later, as an example of grandparents raising their children's children, in a story in which the kid's father, my friend, was barely mentioned -- not even by name -- as an example of irresponsibility, which I guess he was, and maybe is.
When I was around him, he made that old group of us laugh. He lofted 10-pound bowling balls down the lane at high velocity with little accuracy and lots of volume when they hit the boards, and his strikes were both rare and spectacular. They were pretty representative of his all-around behavior, now that I think of it. He laughed constantly, and so did everyone around him. He was in my closest group of friends for years. I don't know where he is now, but I remember him.
The strangest thing, though, is that I can hear him singing that song. I can see him dressed up, build like a bald dwarven weightlifter at 19, with his wife, and her short blond hair and glasses in her wedding dress, pregnant, and our other friends in suits around him. And I can't even remember for sure whether or not I was actually there, at the wedding.
So I guess maybe this kind of exercise doesn't even have honesty going for it. Or at least not accuracy. Ah well.
Is there anything more hackneyed than mulling over memories after hearing a song? Maybe not. But making excuses for it is as bad, or worse. Such memories happen, and if musing over them is nothing new, it's at least not a lie. Each memory or thought like this has a short enough life in the mind of the person who carries it; and communicating such thoughts won't prolong them longer than they deserve to survive.
An old friend of mine sang this song at his wedding, to his wife. It was a simple little private ceremony, in his parents' house. Everyone there talked about how beautiful it was. He did have a fine voice. The song itself now makes me sad in a way that few do. After washing out of the Marines in what I think was his last real attempt to teach himself some discipline, he'd gotten married for the wrong reasons, and too young, and was younger emotionally -- and by that I mean less mature -- even than in age. He got divorced fairly soon, nastily, and came to ridicule his ex-wife, the mother of their son. She was far from blameless, but the fault was shared. His parents ended up adopting his son, and he moved on and more or less disappeared. His parents were even in the local paper years later, as an example of grandparents raising their children's children, in a story in which the kid's father, my friend, was barely mentioned -- not even by name -- as an example of irresponsibility, which I guess he was, and maybe is.
When I was around him, he made that old group of us laugh. He lofted 10-pound bowling balls down the lane at high velocity with little accuracy and lots of volume when they hit the boards, and his strikes were both rare and spectacular. They were pretty representative of his all-around behavior, now that I think of it. He laughed constantly, and so did everyone around him. He was in my closest group of friends for years. I don't know where he is now, but I remember him.
The strangest thing, though, is that I can hear him singing that song. I can see him dressed up, build like a bald dwarven weightlifter at 19, with his wife, and her short blond hair and glasses in her wedding dress, pregnant, and our other friends in suits around him. And I can't even remember for sure whether or not I was actually there, at the wedding.
So I guess maybe this kind of exercise doesn't even have honesty going for it. Or at least not accuracy. Ah well.