#140) "Ms. Jackson" by OutKast - Ms. Jackson has the notable distinction of being on a short list of rap songs I can relate to on a personal level. It smartly forsakes the usual cavalcade of bitches, booties and brainless swagger that distinguishes (too) much of the genre, and actually says something, painting a legitimately moving, even haunting at times, picture of a set of circumstances I once knew well.
Yes yes, I know exactly what this song's talking about. I was young once, and entirely in over my head. I remember as though it happened yesterday what it's like to be saddled with a link to someone I can no longer relate to (or in moments stand), the exhausting dance between bitter conflict and (at best) cold civility consuming our days, those days strung together only by responsibility to a little one who is at once our biggest joy and biggest source of conflict. I remember keenly that responsibility predating my maturity and means, doing my best to adjust for that, her doing her best to adjust, but never quite meeting in the middle, and the situation routinely frayed around the edges by the girl's mother, 'grandmother' waging war on numerous fronts. And all of this at a very young age, when the world in general seems much more daunting than it really is.
These days I'm gleefully free of such responsibilities, and I was one of the lucky ones, I guess. Whenever I spot a young couple drifting through the aisles at the grocery store with their only slightly less young ones in tow and the tension of their tumultuous day-to-day trials as plain as day on their faces, I feel a strange impulse to tell them it gets better, it balances out. Kids grow up, become adults themselves, with any luck take their place in that important roll call of 'friends and family', and all the petty stuff that matters so much now won't in ten years.
Together or apart, life will, in all likelihood, get sorted out and patched up, with mother and grandmother alike. ;-)
"And yes I will be present on the first day of school, and graduation..."
#141) "Christmas at Ground Zero" by Weird Al Yankovic - As a child of the 80s, I grew up at the tail end of the Cold War, and while 'pinko' hysteria was not quite what it had been in the 50s, the Soviets were still considered a larger-than-life threat. It was still very much us against them, two superpowers locked in a life-and-death staring match, the implications and ramifications of which far transcended winning or losing the Olympics. If one of us pressed 'the button', the other would respond in kind, and humanity would be wiped out in a single stroke by the H-bomb (as opposed to the mere A-bomb...)
I grew up aware of this threat, and fearful of it. At my elementary school, in the late 70s, they were still conducting nuclear raid drills for God's sake, still instructing children on duck and cover procedure. I was made uneasy by the sound of a civil air defense siren, the sight of the hammer and sickle. I remember our 2nd grade teacher giving the wrong frigging answer to the question (posed by another kid during a post-duck and cover classroom discussion...seriously), 'What would happen [if the bomb were dropped]...?'
She replied, "There probably wouldn't be much left of anything or anyone."
These days, air raid sirens herald only the approach of a severe thunderstorm, and in some small towns, fire off when it's time for lunch, and though I don't fear intangibles the way I did when I was eight, the sound still causes the hairs on the back of my neck to trill.
Christmas at Ground Zero is typically funny, exactly what you'd expect from Weird Al Yankovic. But when I was just a little bit older, eleven/twelve/thirteen, and started to really understand the implications of nuclear holocaust more than I had in 2nd grade, it came to mean much more to me. Probably more than Yankovic could ever have imagined. It actually helped me cope with the anxiety I felt, taught me that it was possible to laugh about serious things....even deathly serious things. It lent me a kind of gallows humor I still employ today.
And will bring along with me on 1/48/50.
"You might hear some reindeer on your rooftop, or Jack Frost on your window sill / But if someone's climbing down your chimney, you better load your gun and shoot to kill..."
Friday, January 30, 2015
Friday, January 23, 2015
The NEXT Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)
#139) "Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)" by The Doors - It was only about about two hours ago that I learned, to my utter shock, that this song is a cover version. It has its origins in a poem written in 1927, which was then set to music, and used in - of all things - a German opera.
Hmm...you learn something new every day, I guess.
I truly had no idea. I still like the circus-of-madness vibe of Alabama Song...the deviant and defiant-sounding oomp paa paa musicality and incantation, but I got to admit, something's changed, my jets have seriously cooled, now that I can no longer consider it a shining example of The Doors' (especially Jim Morrison's) creative genius.
I can, however, always associate it with a particular night in my past: one girl, countless beers until time raced forward, or maybe countless hits until time was standing still, and the frenzied tarantella this song cast the two of us into, visible from the street should anyone have been walking past at that late, late hour.
And those kinds of memories, the kind I'll take as far as I'm allowed to go, will certainly be along for the ride on 1/48/50.
Who knows, maybe it would have been funnier to dance to this, the (definitely) German opera version.
"Show me the way to the next little girl / oh, don't ask why..."
#140) "Hungarian Rhapsody #2 in C-Sharp Minor" by Franz Liszt (perf. by Dieter Goldmann) - There isn't a lot of information out there about the listed performer, Dieter Goldmann; not a lot of Google action, that is. I'm assuming he's a real person, a prodigy, and though this particular piece of piano ambrosia is known and performed far and wide, taking on an almost celebrity status for all the cartoons and movies it's been featured in, and might for that matter be considered a mere grain of sand on the beach of Franz Liszt's brilliance, Goldmann's rendition appeals to me for its crispness and timing.
I tend to wax rhapsodic (no pun intended) over things I like, but Hungarian Rhapsody #2... really is a glorious piece of music. Proof positive what I've been saying for years: I don't know what's more mind boggling, that someone could sit down and write music like this, or that anybody else could sit down and learn how to play it, or compose a cadenza for it, which Liszt generously issued an open invitation for other performers to do.
Or maybe it wasn't so 'generous'; maybe, given the sheer physical and mental challenge playing it presents, Liszt was like, Come on, try to top that muthafucka! ;-)
When it comes to classical music, sometimes the more complicated a piece is, the more sterile it sounds, at least to me. But with #2..., you get a wide range of human emotion, moments of foreboding, relief, revelry, breathlessness, loveliness, mischievousness, silliness (even a little gooniness, which all greatness acknowledges in some measure, or should...). And as the piece crescendos in its transition from lassan to friska, unfolding like the layers of an artichoke...if that artichoke were the size of a boulder....I can't help but wonder how many fingers you actually need to play this. Twelve at least, I'd say, or a third arm....or a Christy Brown-caliber command of your toes.
I was first introduced to this piece in a Woody Woodpecker cartoon when I was eight. I was moved then, and still am, more than thirty years later,
And bonus, I've been practicing....Hungarian Rhapsody #2 has made me a master air pianist!
Which of course should never, ever be mentioned in the same breath as a true pianist, particularly this one, Marc-Andre Hamelin, whose inspired cadenza near the end (approximately 8:15) actually deserves the word 'genius'.
Dare I say, almost as much as the original piece. If Liszt was issuing a cocky challenge, I'd say Hamelin took him to school.
Hmm...you learn something new every day, I guess.
I truly had no idea. I still like the circus-of-madness vibe of Alabama Song...the deviant and defiant-sounding oomp paa paa musicality and incantation, but I got to admit, something's changed, my jets have seriously cooled, now that I can no longer consider it a shining example of The Doors' (especially Jim Morrison's) creative genius.
I can, however, always associate it with a particular night in my past: one girl, countless beers until time raced forward, or maybe countless hits until time was standing still, and the frenzied tarantella this song cast the two of us into, visible from the street should anyone have been walking past at that late, late hour.
And those kinds of memories, the kind I'll take as far as I'm allowed to go, will certainly be along for the ride on 1/48/50.
Who knows, maybe it would have been funnier to dance to this, the (definitely) German opera version.
"Show me the way to the next little girl / oh, don't ask why..."
#140) "Hungarian Rhapsody #2 in C-Sharp Minor" by Franz Liszt (perf. by Dieter Goldmann) - There isn't a lot of information out there about the listed performer, Dieter Goldmann; not a lot of Google action, that is. I'm assuming he's a real person, a prodigy, and though this particular piece of piano ambrosia is known and performed far and wide, taking on an almost celebrity status for all the cartoons and movies it's been featured in, and might for that matter be considered a mere grain of sand on the beach of Franz Liszt's brilliance, Goldmann's rendition appeals to me for its crispness and timing.
I tend to wax rhapsodic (no pun intended) over things I like, but Hungarian Rhapsody #2... really is a glorious piece of music. Proof positive what I've been saying for years: I don't know what's more mind boggling, that someone could sit down and write music like this, or that anybody else could sit down and learn how to play it, or compose a cadenza for it, which Liszt generously issued an open invitation for other performers to do.
Or maybe it wasn't so 'generous'; maybe, given the sheer physical and mental challenge playing it presents, Liszt was like, Come on, try to top that muthafucka! ;-)
When it comes to classical music, sometimes the more complicated a piece is, the more sterile it sounds, at least to me. But with #2..., you get a wide range of human emotion, moments of foreboding, relief, revelry, breathlessness, loveliness, mischievousness, silliness (even a little gooniness, which all greatness acknowledges in some measure, or should...). And as the piece crescendos in its transition from lassan to friska, unfolding like the layers of an artichoke...if that artichoke were the size of a boulder....I can't help but wonder how many fingers you actually need to play this. Twelve at least, I'd say, or a third arm....or a Christy Brown-caliber command of your toes.
I was first introduced to this piece in a Woody Woodpecker cartoon when I was eight. I was moved then, and still am, more than thirty years later,
And bonus, I've been practicing....Hungarian Rhapsody #2 has made me a master air pianist!
Which of course should never, ever be mentioned in the same breath as a true pianist, particularly this one, Marc-Andre Hamelin, whose inspired cadenza near the end (approximately 8:15) actually deserves the word 'genius'.
Dare I say, almost as much as the original piece. If Liszt was issuing a cocky challenge, I'd say Hamelin took him to school.
Friday, January 16, 2015
The NEXT Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)
#137) "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang" by Ted Nugent - Once again, Uncle Ted comes barreling onto this list full of sexually charged energy, but also, like always, a touch of humor, looking and sounding a little like he's had a stroke ... er, in a good way.
Wang Dang... exemplifies Nugent's tightly crafted musicianship, too often drowned out by his mouth these days. He was no run-of-the-mill metal monger; I certainly wouldn't dismiss his body of work, at least his early stuff, as - *gasp!* - hair metal (in spite of his tenure with the Damn Yankees...), but rather top shelf rock and roll, in many ways how it should be done. His guitar licks and accompanying rhythms are impressively thought through, his stage shows intense and comical; I actually saw the Damn Yankees in Duluth, Minnesota in February 1991, and Nugent, of course, stole the show. In Wang Dang..., the guitar solo is typically hyper-active, and notably matched in its spastic energy by the bass line. Seriously, I have to wonder if the bassist had any thumb left after playing this.
"She's so sweet when she yanks on my meat..."
#138) "People are Strange" by The Doors - Jim Morrison was nothing if not a poet; some would say (maybe he would have, come to think of it) that he was a poet first, a rock star second. In the complete body of The Doors' work, their short-lived but monumental contribution to 1960s music, legend and lore, People Are Strange might be considered a throw-away by some. But the lyrics are pretty potent and poetic, as much about Morrison as anyone else, and yet at the same time mirroring everyone. Most people feel like this at some time in their lives, and good poetry should always reflect universality.
I mostly remember my older brother playing this song when we were kids, over and over, and being reduced to bitter tears by his smug insistence that Jim Morrison had written it specifically about me, at our parents' request. Looking back, maybe I was 'strange', even at age 9, to have ever been led to believe that was possible. Lol.
"Women seem wicked, when you're unwanted..."
Wang Dang... exemplifies Nugent's tightly crafted musicianship, too often drowned out by his mouth these days. He was no run-of-the-mill metal monger; I certainly wouldn't dismiss his body of work, at least his early stuff, as - *gasp!* - hair metal (in spite of his tenure with the Damn Yankees...), but rather top shelf rock and roll, in many ways how it should be done. His guitar licks and accompanying rhythms are impressively thought through, his stage shows intense and comical; I actually saw the Damn Yankees in Duluth, Minnesota in February 1991, and Nugent, of course, stole the show. In Wang Dang..., the guitar solo is typically hyper-active, and notably matched in its spastic energy by the bass line. Seriously, I have to wonder if the bassist had any thumb left after playing this.
"She's so sweet when she yanks on my meat..."
#138) "People are Strange" by The Doors - Jim Morrison was nothing if not a poet; some would say (maybe he would have, come to think of it) that he was a poet first, a rock star second. In the complete body of The Doors' work, their short-lived but monumental contribution to 1960s music, legend and lore, People Are Strange might be considered a throw-away by some. But the lyrics are pretty potent and poetic, as much about Morrison as anyone else, and yet at the same time mirroring everyone. Most people feel like this at some time in their lives, and good poetry should always reflect universality.
I mostly remember my older brother playing this song when we were kids, over and over, and being reduced to bitter tears by his smug insistence that Jim Morrison had written it specifically about me, at our parents' request. Looking back, maybe I was 'strange', even at age 9, to have ever been led to believe that was possible. Lol.
"Women seem wicked, when you're unwanted..."
Friday, January 9, 2015
The NEXT Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)
#135) "(Last Night) I Didn't Get to Sleep At All" by The 5th Dimension - I can't remember the exact quote, but I agree with what Hugh Grant's character said in Music and Lyrics - something about how no other form of entertainment has the power to move someone as deeply or as quickly as a well-written and well-rendered pop song.
Hallelujah. I'm a firm believer that great songs don't always have to be sonic masterpieces crafted by historic bands or artists, nor cutting edge lightning bolts from up and comers at the vanguard of a music scene who haven't (yet) sold out. Sometimes a nice, safe, radio-friendly pop song can be golden, particularly in days past, when more thought was put into the process of writing one. What is the no-less-than-hallowed discography of Motown (for instance), if not essentially just a string of simple pop songs that are so well crafted they never have to try too hard?
I wouldn't call The 5th Dimension 'Motown' (nor compare the two overall), but they're from that same era, when the songwriting process was less reliant on the lazy discipline of finding a rhythmic hook, and they too have a catalog of durable ditties, emphasis on the word 'durable' (and ditties too, I guess, because it sounds funny...)....songs that could only have happened in the late 1960s and early 70s, yet strangely never seem as dated when they play as you'd think they would.
The sweet, crisp melody of Last Night... is always refreshing, never heavy (imagine, if you will, fruit that is canned in its own juice, rather than in syrup), and coupled with the equally clean lines of the arrangement and the vocals, paints the singer's dilemma in an engagingly bittersweet fashion, never allowing for a washout of emotion to make the listener uncomfortable, and always reassuring that things will (probably...) be okay.
Or, if you wish, forget all that blah blah. (Last Night) I Didn't Get to Sleep at All is just pleasing to listen to. It is, simply, a great pop song. Not a great song, necessarily, but a great pop song.
Funny, I never knew singer Marilyn McCoo was in The 5th Dimension. I only remember her, like many Gen Xer's might, as the host of Solid Gold in the early 1980s...
And what I remember of watching the Solid Gold dancers (the female ones, at least) as a newly horny 11-year-old is worthy of its own blog post...;-)
"The sleeping pill I took was just a waste of time..."
#136) "Wichita Lineman" by Glen Campbell - Of course, there's nothing wrong with a brilliant song either, a song that very well might be considered a sonic masterpiece, a song that through innovation and careful attention to detail both in music and in lyrics captures not just a moment in time, but a large chunk of space-time, and gets better with age, to boot.
Wichita Lineman is arguably one of the greatest songs ever written. In country music, especially, it was nothing less than ground-breaking for its time, taking a drastically different tack in its interpretation/representation of the genre: let's not rely only on pathetically empirical evidence of misfortune for once (my wife left me, took the truck, took the kids, took the dog, went back to mama...), let's step into our minds this time, and out of our bodies, and see where we might end up.
Songwriter Jimmy Webb reportedly spotted an actual lineman high atop a pole while driving, and that scene, what he is said to have called the 'picture of loneliness', inspired the song. The resulting assemblage of misty strings and blaring horns stitched together by Campbell's eerily detached vocals would seem a rare and priceless nexus of subject matter and medium.
There are few songs that affect me quite like Wichita Lineman, few songs that describe the twilight of my own mind so readily, that mental place we all have where horizon meets sky. There have been many cover versions, but Campbell's is the only one I hear, and for me, 'Wichita' has transcended the mere song, become a kind of state of mind, a condition. It is sometimes - not always, but sometimes - what being 'country' is about: not the non-stop flag waving, good-timing tailgating so prevalent in today's version of country music, but days and nights spent coping with distance and loneliness, a flash point of longing as urgently bright and blinding as any popping off in the city, but dimmed by a thin film of fear...for what you can't ever really say.
Wichita is the first of the long thoughts that arrive as the last of the day's light excuses itself from the room, the moment you can't help wondering if you, and all you see, might be existing only in someone else's imagination.
"And I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time..."
Hallelujah. I'm a firm believer that great songs don't always have to be sonic masterpieces crafted by historic bands or artists, nor cutting edge lightning bolts from up and comers at the vanguard of a music scene who haven't (yet) sold out. Sometimes a nice, safe, radio-friendly pop song can be golden, particularly in days past, when more thought was put into the process of writing one. What is the no-less-than-hallowed discography of Motown (for instance), if not essentially just a string of simple pop songs that are so well crafted they never have to try too hard?
I wouldn't call The 5th Dimension 'Motown' (nor compare the two overall), but they're from that same era, when the songwriting process was less reliant on the lazy discipline of finding a rhythmic hook, and they too have a catalog of durable ditties, emphasis on the word 'durable' (and ditties too, I guess, because it sounds funny...)....songs that could only have happened in the late 1960s and early 70s, yet strangely never seem as dated when they play as you'd think they would.
The sweet, crisp melody of Last Night... is always refreshing, never heavy (imagine, if you will, fruit that is canned in its own juice, rather than in syrup), and coupled with the equally clean lines of the arrangement and the vocals, paints the singer's dilemma in an engagingly bittersweet fashion, never allowing for a washout of emotion to make the listener uncomfortable, and always reassuring that things will (probably...) be okay.
Or, if you wish, forget all that blah blah. (Last Night) I Didn't Get to Sleep at All is just pleasing to listen to. It is, simply, a great pop song. Not a great song, necessarily, but a great pop song.
Funny, I never knew singer Marilyn McCoo was in The 5th Dimension. I only remember her, like many Gen Xer's might, as the host of Solid Gold in the early 1980s...
And what I remember of watching the Solid Gold dancers (the female ones, at least) as a newly horny 11-year-old is worthy of its own blog post...;-)
"The sleeping pill I took was just a waste of time..."
#136) "Wichita Lineman" by Glen Campbell - Of course, there's nothing wrong with a brilliant song either, a song that very well might be considered a sonic masterpiece, a song that through innovation and careful attention to detail both in music and in lyrics captures not just a moment in time, but a large chunk of space-time, and gets better with age, to boot.
Wichita Lineman is arguably one of the greatest songs ever written. In country music, especially, it was nothing less than ground-breaking for its time, taking a drastically different tack in its interpretation/representation of the genre: let's not rely only on pathetically empirical evidence of misfortune for once (my wife left me, took the truck, took the kids, took the dog, went back to mama...), let's step into our minds this time, and out of our bodies, and see where we might end up.
Songwriter Jimmy Webb reportedly spotted an actual lineman high atop a pole while driving, and that scene, what he is said to have called the 'picture of loneliness', inspired the song. The resulting assemblage of misty strings and blaring horns stitched together by Campbell's eerily detached vocals would seem a rare and priceless nexus of subject matter and medium.
 |
| "...THAT STRETCH DOWN SOUTH..." - It was reportedly while driving along a west-running road in Oklahoma, where songwriter Jimmy Webb spotted a lineman perched atop a pole, and was inspired to write Wichita Lineman. This photo was actually taken in Kansas (Jan. 2011), but hey, there's enough longing and loneliness in this life to go around...this scene exists everywhere. |
There are few songs that affect me quite like Wichita Lineman, few songs that describe the twilight of my own mind so readily, that mental place we all have where horizon meets sky. There have been many cover versions, but Campbell's is the only one I hear, and for me, 'Wichita' has transcended the mere song, become a kind of state of mind, a condition. It is sometimes - not always, but sometimes - what being 'country' is about: not the non-stop flag waving, good-timing tailgating so prevalent in today's version of country music, but days and nights spent coping with distance and loneliness, a flash point of longing as urgently bright and blinding as any popping off in the city, but dimmed by a thin film of fear...for what you can't ever really say.
Wichita is the first of the long thoughts that arrive as the last of the day's light excuses itself from the room, the moment you can't help wondering if you, and all you see, might be existing only in someone else's imagination.
"And I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time..."
Friday, January 2, 2015
Thoughts on winter travel...
Most of December was pretty mild, but it snowed on Christmas Eve, then turned cold Christmas Day. More snow over the weekend made it look and feel even more like winter, and now, as the new year takes hold, so does a deep, dark Arctic blast, and it's got me thinking about the concept of taking a winter road trip.
This is of no small significance. There was a time when entertaining such a thought would have been nothing less than blasphemy. So long I've dreamt of making this highway run (thank you, Bruce...), for almost 30 years now it has been a part of how I saw - or wanted to see - myself, where I wanted to see myself. And for all that time, in whatever capacity it was regarded (either methodically planned, or maniacally fantasized about, with all the glittery details sprawled across the landscape of my mind), it has remained an exclusively summertime odyssey, if for no other reason than I have always despised winter.
But to my surprise (and against all odds), I've warmed up to the coldest season as time's passed, even just since I started this blog nearly two years ago. Make no mistake, I'm still sick of the sickness and cold, the early evenings, long nights and late dawns, the uneasy patter across icy sidewalks in temperatures so cold skin can freeze instantly, praying to remain on your feet, to not give the guy watching you through the window of the Starbucks something to laugh uproariously at. There remains to this day nothing I wouldn't prefer to do in summer rather than winter (including skiing, sledding and building snow forts), and I still plan (hope) to live out my golden years somewhere warm, because winter is no place to be old.
But to my surprise (and against all odds), I've warmed up to the coldest season as time's passed, even just since I started this blog nearly two years ago. Make no mistake, I'm still sick of the sickness and cold, the early evenings, long nights and late dawns, the uneasy patter across icy sidewalks in temperatures so cold skin can freeze instantly, praying to remain on your feet, to not give the guy watching you through the window of the Starbucks something to laugh uproariously at. There remains to this day nothing I wouldn't prefer to do in summer rather than winter (including skiing, sledding and building snow forts), and I still plan (hope) to live out my golden years somewhere warm, because winter is no place to be old.
But I'm not old...yet. I can still hack it, and winter, even last year's horrendous 'polar vortex' variety, doesn't frustrate me - or depress me - the way it used to. News of a weather advisory or storm warning doesn't fill me with a knee-jerk anxiety like it once did. Cold spells and dark winter nights no longer afflict me with cabin fever. And when it's been snowing all night, and I awaken to find I must plod Frankenstein-like through knee-high snowdrifts to my car, when the brittle ice scraper snaps in half as I'm impatiently chiseling just enough of a porthole through the ice on my windshield to drive, when the best way to dig my vehicle out is to come in from above, I'm not angry or offended like I might have been in earlier times. There was a time I actually took winter personally. No longer.
For reasons unknown, winter, which in my neck of the woods can decide to stick around throughout April and into May, has taken its rightful place as a time for reflection and contemplation. And so, for the first time in my life, I can admit there might be some unique advantages to taking a road trip in the off-season.
1/48/60?
For reasons unknown, winter, which in my neck of the woods can decide to stick around throughout April and into May, has taken its rightful place as a time for reflection and contemplation. And so, for the first time in my life, I can admit there might be some unique advantages to taking a road trip in the off-season.
Doubtless there would be mostly hassles and headaches. Weather would a factor, especially in northern climates. There might be times, numerous if bad luck followed me, when I'd run into a blizzard that actually impeded my travel for an extended period, and that lack of progress would surely get in the way of any travel rhythm I was trying to achieve. Even on clear sunny winter days, icy conditions can be hazardous, and any time spent outside would be, at the very least, uncomfortable. That would really be a drag; I'm a walker. Come to think of it, cold weather would get in the way of my plan to take an RV...might snuff it out all together.
 |
| DRIVING IN A WINTER WONDERLAND - When I think road trip, when anyone thinks road trip, scenes like this (a snowy Saturday morning in Trempealeau County, Wisconsin) don't generally come to mind. But what might it feel like, how might it read, to travel long distances through winter? |
But logistics aside, speaking purely in psychological/emotional terms, I wonder how being a drifter - being nebulous - from, say, October through April, might read differently than doing what I've been planning to do since I was thirteen: drive cross country from May to October.
I imagine the weightlessness of travel through the holiday season would be especially lonely. The holidays are when most of us strive to feel connected, to reaffirm the social nature of our species, the bonds that give our lives meaning. But at the same time it could be strangely invigorating to spend Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve in a completely random town among strangers, then drive on facing a string of winter (as opposed to summer) events and holidays punctuating the days - the NFL playoffs, Martin Luther King Day, the Superbowl, Groundhog's Day, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter...
These are all different holidays, of course, with different purposes and degrees of observation, to be sure (lest any reader think I'm blithely lumping MLK Day in with Groundhog's Day...), but as mile markers stringing segments of time (and distance) together, they comprise a 'winter collective' that would surely inform any extended road trip quite differently than its summer cousin.
Not to mention, people act different in winter than in summer, for a variety of reasons. The simple matter of the weather being fouler in most areas of the country can't help but change how people behave (blistering heat has a similar effect in the summer). Most people have less money in winter, their financial house recently blown out by the holidays, and right around the joys of tax time, to boot. They're more likely to get sick in the winter, and stay sick for longer periods of time. Kids tend to be cooped up inside in the winter months, annoying each other and fraying the last nerve of their parents. All of this almost certainly contributes to a change in attitudes and relations among society as a whole that might only be measurable by someone who is nebulous.
The landscape would also look much different in winter than it would in summer, and I know that would drastically change the experience. In fact, that's perhaps the most significant way I've embraced winter recently: I used to find the winter day gloomy and muddy and depressing at best. Now, it possesses a brooding beauty that for the first time I take notice of, rather than resent.
I guess the only way to measure differences accurately would be to do both trips...one in the summer, one in the winter. Ideally it would be the same trip, exact same route, just in two different seasons. And honestly, the more I think about that, the more I like the idea.
For now, however, I'm going to stay focused on 1/48/50, the exclusively summertime odyssey. But another time? Definitely. Same route, different season...I can see it now.
These are all different holidays, of course, with different purposes and degrees of observation, to be sure (lest any reader think I'm blithely lumping MLK Day in with Groundhog's Day...), but as mile markers stringing segments of time (and distance) together, they comprise a 'winter collective' that would surely inform any extended road trip quite differently than its summer cousin.
Not to mention, people act different in winter than in summer, for a variety of reasons. The simple matter of the weather being fouler in most areas of the country can't help but change how people behave (blistering heat has a similar effect in the summer). Most people have less money in winter, their financial house recently blown out by the holidays, and right around the joys of tax time, to boot. They're more likely to get sick in the winter, and stay sick for longer periods of time. Kids tend to be cooped up inside in the winter months, annoying each other and fraying the last nerve of their parents. All of this almost certainly contributes to a change in attitudes and relations among society as a whole that might only be measurable by someone who is nebulous.
The landscape would also look much different in winter than it would in summer, and I know that would drastically change the experience. In fact, that's perhaps the most significant way I've embraced winter recently: I used to find the winter day gloomy and muddy and depressing at best. Now, it possesses a brooding beauty that for the first time I take notice of, rather than resent.
I guess the only way to measure differences accurately would be to do both trips...one in the summer, one in the winter. Ideally it would be the same trip, exact same route, just in two different seasons. And honestly, the more I think about that, the more I like the idea.
For now, however, I'm going to stay focused on 1/48/50, the exclusively summertime odyssey. But another time? Definitely. Same route, different season...I can see it now.
1/48/60?
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