Tag: innocence

In My Life

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 14 Comments
Alan Aldridge

Reflections written on the 4th of July …. No drinking, no drugs. Just reflecting…

 

July 4th evening.

Here’s this old lady in a boho dress, matching pink crystal dangle earrings, sitting at a picnic bench all by herself, listening to a Beatles cover band playing in the park, all alone in my corner, singing along with every song, looking (and no doubt sounding) like a dork.

And, finally, after ALL these years, not caring.

Why did it take over 60 years to get to this place?

I’m not a pretty 70 year old. The willowy, fragile, blowing kind of older beauty groupie that could get away with singing with the band I’m not. This 70 year old is a bit scary if you ask me. There are big bags under my eyes, sagging skin, too many pounds — the whole kit n’ caboodle. 

But I’m one of those baby boomers whose life started with the Beatles. And whose life will most likely end with the Beatles.

It started many years ago with a state of mind not found in the world of 12-year-olds these days. A time when songs reflected the singers who projected themselves as innocent as they shared their hearts with innocent girls of the world.  The circle of love was pure, simple, and forever.

We didn’t know any better.

And that was okay.

I have tears in my eyes as I belt out the words to PS I Love You  and I’m Happy Just to Dance With You. At this very moment my heart hurts and I am short of breath. I am standing here by myself feeling 12 again. 

Now that there’s a break in the presentation I wonder why these days gone by mean so much to me. Why do I feel so much more of a reaction to the Beatle’s A Hard Day’s Night than I do to Purple Rain by Prince (or whatever popular song of the past 50 years comes to mind)?

Why did I come by myself?

At first I thought coming to this fun performance alone was a bad idea. Concerts are better shared with others.

Yet I am so glad I came alone. I travelled back in time, running all over the place, remembering duck taping empty album covers all over my bedroom walls and writing my first ever story about me and Paul McCartney and the Beatles concert I went to at Comiskey Park in Illinois when I was 12.

No one can hold a candle to memories like that.

And that’s why I came.

 

 

 

Monday Monday

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 8 Comments

Bah-da, bah-da-da-da
Bah-da, bah-da-da-da
Bah-da, bah-da-da-da

(do you know the song yet?)

Monday, Monday (bah-da, bah-da-da-da)
So good to me (bah-da, bah-da-da-da)
Monday mornin’, it was all I hoped it would be ..

All the oldies out there knew the song by the first six syllables. Funny how engrained music is into us. Even when we don’t think about it.

Was trying to come up with a topic, a theme, for this cloudy, cold Monday. But if there’s nothing there there’s nothing there.

Then a slip of lyrics passed through my head.

Monday, Monday (bah-da, bah-da-da-da)

I was a freshman in high school when the Mamas and Papas sang this song. I was escaping the horrors of middle school at that time. Those were rough times, especially for a geeky, smelly kid like me.

Not really stepping back, but I do know that even back then music made a difference in my life. The Beatles were my saviors, the Dave Clark Five my happiness. No one could break the bond between me and Paul or me and Dave. My writing started way back then, too. I used to have a notebook with my first love story written in it, but it is long gone. Perhaps it disappeared when it served its purpose.

Music was an escape when I was young. An emotional booster, an answer for self-consciousness and self-doubt. I didn’t think about doing drugs or getting drunk or having sex back then. (Shows you how backwards my freshman year was.)

But Last Train to Clarksville by the the Monkees and Summer In The City by the Lovin’ Spoonful and Five O’Clock World by the Vogues were songs that wrapped around those hard times and cushioned decisions in my life like why I never had a date Saturday nights or if my girlfriends wanted to have a pajama party or should I try out for the school play when I couldn’t sing.

I wonder if kids today have an inkling of that innocence. If they ever have a chance to be kids. If they ever have a choice to not be a part of the violence and discrimination and hatred that swirls around all of us.

I suppose songs like WAP by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion (I wouldn’t look up the words if I were you) reflects the current needs and desires within a high-school education, the need to be free and understood and in control. Maybe innocence in its banal form is not needed anymore. Better to be smart than be exploited.

These days I find myself wandering back to that innocence I probably never really had. I have had enough of death and prejudice and politics to last a lifetime of discovery. Time for a bit of innocence to return to the world.

Do you believe in magic in a young girl’s heart
How the music can free her whenever it starts?
And it’s magic if the music is groovy
It makes you feel happy like an old-time movie………..