s n a p p e r h e a d

This is the SOUND of my SOUL

I've had so many preferred songs, bands, and even genres in the five-feckin-hundred months which have elapsed since I started formulating favorites (described here) that it seems unfair/impossible/cheating to pick one. I could never only eat just one.

It's not that Led Zeppelin would get jealous if I said I like Pink Floyd better. Nor would Chicago Transit Authority get a bruised ego if I chose Fleetwood Mac over them, either. But as the last dozen days have shown, it is better—for me—to tie either an emotional balloon or a temporal anchor to my selection switch.

Ginny's title—a song from your favorite band—seems like it's missing that connection with my past or my soul or my sumthinerother. I prefer: A Favorite Song From (Random Year).

I used a random number generator to choose the year. With the parameter years between when I was 12 years old and today (52). The generator selected one integer for me. It chose 24.

I turned twenty-four years old in 1983.

Sticking with Squire as the font of all knowledge, I used Squire's favorite chalkboard to remind me what songs were released in 1983; then what songs were hits in 1983. (Unsurprisingly, it lists all years.)

From that quick scan of albums, artists, and songs I remembered many...but one was my favorite that year: Spandau Ballet, True. (My bona fide fy-ants will karaoke it, sometimes. She sings it fantastically.)

Day 14 - A Song that Reminds You of Elementary School

Sleepus Interruptus

          My brain often reminds—I was once much more free of cares.
          In the pajama years, my heart thrummed light all thru the night.
          Until my supposedly-asleep adolescent ears heard Johnny Carson.
          On Tonight, in black & white, he jested about statistics. Sleep attire.
How much we wore; at what age. My brain no longer retains the funny.
It probably wasn't (even though Ed, Doc & the audience had to chuckle).
          That night, my mind decided to completely remove myself from childhood.
I tossed it, rumpled, on the rug—the next morning I dropped it in the hamper.
          The next thirteen and a half thousand nights weren't carefree—my brain recalls.
          There were the bunks of clothed nights in open-bay barracks hounded by snores.
The months singing the sleepingbag blues, just catchin a snooze in all but my shoes.
And the occasional fright; foxhole without light; desperate night forced to nap upright.
Or even those rare unkissed but unmissed, pulling the full-moon into the next's sun-rays.
          Sleep is now a skittish kitten, creeping in after all sounds (internal and external) extinguish.
White noise from a nearby brook does help damp down the unexpected, nearby coyote's yip.
Earplugs help transcontinental flights or when an inconsiderate bucking fastard is playing music.
          From books on the nightstand to Bogie downstairs on-demand, the sandman has many assistants.
          Warm mint tea in the evening, a bedtime valerian/melatonin dose and then a nice refractory period.

Ginny's title today: A Song That Makes You Fall Asleep caused me to sketch this prose-ish poem. There are no songs that make me fall asleep, lull me toward rest, nor do anything besides wake me...except white noise or—like the two-hour nap inducing video above—waves (and I might even be woken around the 17 and 42 minute marks of this, when some rude seagull shouts 'wake up!').

Day 13 - A Favorite Song From (Random Year)

BackwidanodrwunadozBlokRoknBEATS

Today's title: A Song You Can Dance To reminds me of my current reality. I don't "hit the dance floor" with enthusiasm anymore. I don't have the energy I once had. I'll join my partner on occasion, but I don't enjoy it (unless I'm not driving, have imbibed sufficiently to no longer care that I look like a goofy gyrating grampa, and the right music is playing). The Chemical Brothers, Block Rockin Beats is still the right music.

Day 12 - A Song You Can Fall Asleep To

Crisis? What Crisis?

...when half of what they got, you know, they never will use. Enough to get by suits me fine; I don't care if you think I'm funny...

I've got the baton. I enjoyed following Ginny, but yesterday she forwarded all her planned titles, which—I think—means she's relayed the song-a-day baton. Hopefully she'll resume. Until then, I'll cherry pick from her list and make up my own until...questionmark.

Choosing a title is much more complex than the linear exercise of identifying a song to fit someone else's title. This conundrum (similar to mentally wrestling with a kōan) stems from my mind instantaneously "discarding" titles which don't immediately pair-up with a tune from my frontal and parietal lobes. Even when I remind myself the challenge is to force yourself to dredge deep; you can't do that if you're putting the song before the title, my conscious brain still cheats when it competes with itself. I never could finish a paint-by-numbers, because I already knew what it would look like.

Today's title: A Song That Describes You.

The Supertramp song, Poor Boy, succinctly describes my personal politics, character, as well as a portion of my attitude (lassitude?) towards others and life in general. The "mouth-trumpet" which bookends the song is a key ingredient to my enjoyment of it. For me, it imbues an attitude of: too destitute to own an instrument but not too proud to fake it.

The one lyric which captures me best: Although I'll rant an I'll rave about one thing an' another...the beauty of it is (hope you'll agree)...tho' I'm a poor boy, I can still be happy, as long as I can feel free.

Day 11 - A Song You Can Dance To

No Children

In the spirit of being a good military wingman (Ginny's probably currently engaging the enemy with Gatling guns a-blazin) and a desire to—mixed metaphor ahead—pick up the fumbled ball and serve it with scallions and cheese...I'll keep her video-for-a-month thing going with an abstruse tip o' the dunce cap to April 1^st (All Fools Day). My title for today is A Song That Makes You Laugh.

The Mountain Goats, No Children fits perfectly by causing giggle fits.

I was never mentally supercharged enough to orchestrate an April Fools Day Joke. Days like today were the bane of my youth. In pre-cellphone years not only would I arrive an hour late each year on the day after Spring-forward's daylight savings but six months later I'd arrive an hour early after failing to Fall-back; I'd always get pinched for failing to wear green on March 17^th; and I seemed to be a prank-magnet every April's Fools Day morning (after falling for the first one, I'd then engage my remain-vigilant and overly-suspicious filter).

Day 10 - A Song That Describes You

Ahhh've Seen Trouble All My Days

As a serial monogamist, I've been involved with, married to, or in a serious relationship with, a relatively small quantity of women. Over the decades, I willingly adapted to the druthers, hobbies, and preferences of my partner. I started with Catholic Mass (I was young, forgive me for my hypocrisy) and over the next thirty years, as I dumped /slash/ became the dumpee /slash/ agreed we should go our separate ways...I morphed. From church, to wherever any other military personnel would not be, to bingo, to wherever her boyfriend wouldn't be, to slot machines, to hiking trails, to dance clubs, to casinos, to . . .

In 2003 I fell in love with a woman who loves to sing Karaoke. Last year she agreed to be my fiancée (pronounced fy-ants). And, can't forget to mention: she's bona fide.

Did you know that is the grammatically correct spelling? Two words? Latin? I didn't. Not until this very moment. Which is what Ginny's 30-day marathon is supposed to accomplish! Today is Day 8: A song you know all the words to.

Now I—too—kroak on occasion; and I've learned the words to some. One of my favorites is The Soggy Bottom Boy's rendition of Man of Constant Sorrow. Here's why it is the perfect song to sing in public:

Not many sing it because nobody remembers the artist or title.
Once the first chords begin...everybody recalls it from the film, and loves it.
It's short.
You can almost talk all the words with a breathy nasal twang.
There are a few well-spaced instrumental breaks so you can catch your breath.
If you over-pantomime a few hillbilly-esque step-turn-kicks and duck-walks (from the film) while pretending to run your thumbs under shoulder straps you can OWN the audience.

Day 9 - A Song That Makes You Laugh

Birthday Event

Ginny's title the 7^th day of this month-long videorama is A Song That Reminds You of a Certain Event.

How apropos.

Today is my birthday.

My favorite impressionist painter was also born today.

I'm unsure which came first—learning that our births were exactly 106 years apart or falling in love with his brushstroke-genius. Vincent by Don McLean always reminds me of today. As an added coinkeydink...my favorite painting is at the three-minute and thirty-second point of this video.

For all the skeptics who don't believe in coincidences: Ginny and I didn't discuss today's topic ahead of time. It's just a happy circumstance that her song reminds her of giving birth and my song reminds me that Vincent Van Gogh's and Veach Glines's geboorte verjaardag valt samen. Since, in the US, today's date is depicted: 3-30; I also didn't coordinate with the creator of this video to insure Wheatfield with Crows would appear at the 3.30 mark...and it really has been my favorite since 1994, when I saw it at the Van Gogh Museum.

Day 8 - Song That You Know All the Words To

1970, Winter, Ohio

...one floor below me you don't even know me, I love you...

- Caught my Mother in a lie; began filtering my thoughts and actions (and stopped confiding).
- Had my first crush on a classmate—Janice Brailer (but not on her twin, Janet).
- Discovered masturbation (far out, man).
- Began to cultivate a new-found interest in music different from that favored by family members.
- Asked for a Panasonic Ball Radio for Christmas, which I'd seen in a magazine.
- Joined the Nashport Elementary basketball team (a mean feat for the shortest boy in class).
- Became crossing guard (allowed to be late for first period; had to leave last period before everyone else).

I actually received the Christmas present I asked for—unheard of in my family—since we normally received clothes, books, safe and sanitized bargain-bin toys which may have been popular a year or two prior, and odd things that mom and ²dad wrongfully concluded we would enjoy. I hung this radio on my headboard and listened to it constantly until the battery died. And the next battery. And the next. Weeks. Months. Any rainy weekend, most winter evenings, every night...I was in my bedroom with the door closed. Doing homework. Reading books. Beating off while fantasizing about Janice. But always listening to my radio.

Day 6 of Ginny's month o' videos title is A song that reminds you of someplace. Knock Three Times by Tony Orlando and Dawn, reminds me of that entire winter.

Day 7 - Song that Reminds You of an Event

All About My Mother² and Parenting Skills

The prefixes great- and grand- before "parent" measure both the distance along a family tree and (oft-times inappropriately) imply a distinguished performance, therefore, I'll use more algorithmic pronouns. Grandfather is father²; great-grandparents are parents³ (ad infinitum).

My parents⁵ (on mom's-father²s-side) would have thought the need for parenting skills was as ridiculous a concept as paying for water. They came from people of means. This was New England in healing-from-civil-war American times! Not only was indoor plumbing making it easier to relieve oneself with comfort—no more trudging to the outhouse in the middle of the night with a kerosene lantern and a Sears & Roebuck catalog—but this newfangled electricity-thingy was making all manner of things easier. Just in time too. The first Republican president's emancipation-thingy meant you had to cut back on the unpaid-household staff and all the nannies had been the first to go.

My parents⁴, proud Bullards from the northern Bullard stock, sent their son (father³) to Exeter Academy. He matriculated to Harvard with all of his schoolmates as was expected of him. After college, he married a Davis (mother³). She was also from a family of means and her uncle⁵ had been Isaac Davis.

My father² was ~~shipped off to boarding school just like his father~~ a legacy at Exeter Academy. Unlike his father, however, he dropped out of Harvard because he impregnated my mother² and needed a job now that he was all-but-disowned. His mother, always very full of herself, said to him—about my mother²—"How could you? With the low-born offspring of common grammar school teachers! Your life is over! Now you'll never amount to anything."

My mom—the compound-product of generations of the never-parented—couldn't attend Exeter Academy like her brother (my uncle) because of that unfortunate born-with-a-vagina-thingy. Instead, she got a summer waitressing job at The House on the Hill, an inn and restaurant in Kennebunkport, Maine, run by my father's parents. Mom did, however, fully embrace her parent's pregnant-before-marriage-thingy. And then dad had to stop busing tables and join the Navy in order to support his newly formed unplanned family.

I never knew my dad, Leverett Glines, nor any of his ancestors because my mother divorced him when I was just three and then moved us back-in with her parents—my parents²—whom I called Nana and Papa.

For the few years we lived at Nana and Papa's house (until my mom re-married and we moved in with my ²dad) Nana would oft times attempt to lull me to sleep, naptime and bedtime, by playing music on the 45rpm record player which was always positioned on the back of the organ, or by playing the organ itself. Of the stack of 45's she played over-and-over, I strongly remember only one. This one. And every time I hear this song, Canadian Sunset by Hugo Winterhalter, I remember my Nana.

Nana...who recognized she'd been a terrible parent and tried to make up for it by cutting all the crust off her ²son's Fluffernutters made with Wonderbread and slicing them into strips she called "little soldiers." Nana, who put a scoop of vanilla in my rootbeer and called it a "Brown Cow frappé". Nana, who—referring to her scornful mother-in-law—said: "Great-Nana Bullard somehow thinks being distantly related to the only damn-fool-idiot killed by the 'shot heard round the world' is somethin to be so very proud of."

I have absolutely no parenting skills (and don't miss not having them, either). Is that because of my genetics? My environment? Probably because of heaping dollops of both.

Ginny's Day 5: A song that reminds you of someone.

My Day 6 - Song That Reminds You of Some Place

Sad Beautiful

Watching Christina Aguilera sing I Am Beautiful will chime no more emotional bells than Andy Rooney creaking I Am Elderly or Mel Gibson blathering I Am Crazy...but, every time I watch the two-minute video of Madame Aguilera's tune being sung by an animated ostrich, it strums my heartstrings, brings tears to my eyes, and—no matter how many times—makes me feel a little sad.

Although today's topic in Ginny's video-a-day challenge was 'song that makes you sad,' I decided (like I do) to color outside the lines a bit. Not because there aren't plenty of songs which make me sad. Oh sure there are me'boyo. By the raft load. Hell, I'm ovaries-deep in male menopause. I get a wee bleary if I overhear someone discussing In The Ghetto by the late-great Mister Presley. [Note: I've not a clue why the last few sentences came out as if I were a leprechaun. But, they did. And re-reading them made me giggle, so I left them.]

I jumped aboard this thirty day cruise because Ginny kicked it off four days ago by smashing her "video-a-day" bottle of bubbly across the bow. So even though this song, alone, doesn't make me even a little bit sad—in this video, it does. And has ever since I saw it six years ago.

Sad songs are better if you begin listening in a happy mood. If you're not happy right now, listen to yesterdays song first.