Today is the lovely and rising rock star Taylor Momsen’s birthday.
I am here only with Logan. Thunderstorms went through and as usual (though this one was different…. I couldn’t get into my swimsuit because it was inside out and is torn up the side…. I need a new one…. I was in the pool trying to get the solar cover on, in the rain and wind. Later, there was an insane amount of lightning.
Which of course took down my internet service, so I decided to play Light Me Up, which I still think is one of, if not *the* best album of 2010.
At the beginning of “You” (which I played a few times today thinking of a friend whose last two years are essentially summed up in the message and meaning of that song), Logan thought it was Johnny Cash.
He was referring to his cover of Sheryl Crow’s awesome song “Redemption Day” which I have loved since it came out (along with “Anything But Down” and “If It Makes You Happy”). Johnny Cash’s version of “Redemption Day” is on an album we often play here when my dad visits.
I love it when my dad visits. I feel that my connection to him has always been very intense… ever since we walked into the fog after I pointed to fog and asked, “What’s that?” He said, “It’s fog. Do you want to go in it?” and I said “YES!” and we did. This is one of my first memories.
I think I was 4. That was very special, we walked around in it and talked about how fog was like a cloud on the ground. It was so humid today that Logan told me the shotgun he wanted to shoot had condensation on it when he took it out of the case. We have been discussing condensation the last two days….
I had a very special night in the fog as an adult when I took the green laser photos for Melissa Poole, an artist, friend, and Chris Stein’s ex-wife.
The green laser, and the blue LED, these were only a dream of science when I was growing up. Now they are reality.
Unrelated:
I feel a very special pride when I can explain something to my children the way that my dad explained things to me. I’m also pleased that I can add more detail, like defining “dew point” and the relationships between volume, temperature, and pressure of gases.
I like how streams of thought lead from one thing to another to another and seem to end up in a random unrelated place, but one that reminds you of something important.
It occurred to me after I imagined that Sheryl Crow must be very proud of her work given that Johnny Cash, a musician whose work has been popular since before I was born, that there is a story about me that I don’t recall ever telling.
When I was young, I visited my grandparents (my dad’s mother and stepfather) and stayed overnight from Friday evening until Saturday afternoon (I would always watch Land of the Lost and The Pink Panther and I *loved* that Ant and the Aardvark!).
When I was 3 years old, perhaps until I was 4, I would sit in a tiny, dark brown, wooden rocking chair and play the 7″ 45 rpm single of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” over and over and over. The memory is vague, but I think it had the big hole in the center. I don’t know why I did this, and I barely remember it.
I believe that time doesn’t really exist.
Reminder to self: write about the article talking about contingencies and continuities and how they are undetermined until they pass through the singularity known as “now” to become fixed as the past.
(Note to self 12/25/12: I did this, Walter Alvarez the guy who discovered what killed the dinosaurs. Must find this.)
discovermagazine.com/2009/oct/26-the-man-who-discovered-what-killed-the-dinosaurs
The interesting part is on the second page.
So back to my point about time not existing.
In 1980, Blondie covered “Ring of Fire” for a movie and put it out on an LP.
Why THAT song? Why that one?
I didn’t know about it at the time… in fact it would be years after that, when I became a Blondie collector and they became the center of my entire adult life until I realized that existed.
It just seems that there is more to it than simple coincidence that I chose THAT band, and it happened to be THAT song that I played 15 times in a row when I was just turning 4.
Hmmm.
Higgs boson discovery confirmed by press release from CERN.
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2012/PR17.12E.html