Saturday Night Soup for the Soul (13)

he birthday odometer turned over another mile this week sending me into a mood of brooding introspection. The music I have had circling through my brain reflects this process. People say we got it made Don't they know we're so afraid? Isolation We're afraid to be alone Everybody got to have a home Isolation 1. Isolation is an obscure song from John Lennon's first post Beatles crack-up LP titled "Plastic Ono Band" . The LP is still rated one of the great works of popular music. It is stark, stripped of all fru-fru production embellishment, and sounds as powerful today as when it was released in the fall of 1970. The theme of the LP is feeling one's raw emotions unfiltered, undulled by drugs or by distraction, and undiluted. John had a lifetime of avoided reality going back to the abandonment by his father Freddy, and of the early tragic death of his mother Julia that he had never properly felt, dealt with, and buried. He poured his guts out on this LP. I too feel isolation. I often feel myself to be a minority within a minority. That ancient sense was in my thoughts and broodings this week. Though some things in life are hard to bear Dont let it bring you down Should the sand of time run out on you Dont let it bring you down 2. Don't Let it Bring You Down has such a nice moody musical feel to it. Resignation and acceptance of things one cannot change. Pondered a series of such things this week in my dark brooding. I am preparing to bury these ghosts: four immediate family members who have died in the past two years, two suicides of close friends since 2000, and another death I’ll speak of in a couple of songs. “Close the book, silence the bell and blow out the candle. Life is to precious to be spent making peace with ghosts that never listen”. From "Ghost" -- thank you KB for reminding me how to live. This song comes from a 1978 Wings LP titled London Town. Paul rented two yachts. One fitted with a recording studio, and the other for he, Linda, the kids, Denny Laine (ex Moody Bluesman). Togeteher, they sailed about the Caribbean recording a sizeable chunk of this LP. Damn if he doesn't know how to do it good. That has always been a big-time fantasy of mine – to go on some long trip, and take all my tools of the trade along. A sort of artist's Magical Mystery Tour. 3. Treefingers is an obscure song from Radiohead's Kid A CD. This has that winter fog sound -- when you turn off conscious thought and drift into the realm of the sub conscious. 4. and 5. Wholy Holy takes me back to the summer solstice in 1971. I was still a teenager, and enjoying an all day outing in Seattle with a friend, who became my first boyfriend, before the day ended, most romantically, on his living room floor. During the outing, Lonnie bought the first ghetto blaster I had seen: a big portable 8 track tape player. To go along with it, he bought Marvin Gaye's new LP “What’s Going On”. I do not remember much about listening to the LP that day other than the title track. I was totally into rock at that time (though was on the verge of discovering the official homosexual symphony, which I will write about in a future soup post). Lonnie was into soul. I was a highly creative highly intelligent white boy who could not dance. Lawrence (his birth name) was into clothes, fashion, and going out to underage gay dance clubs. I was romantic, affectionate, longing to nest and to marry. Lonnie was into anonymous sex for sex's sake (I did not know this at the time) and later went to bathhouses in Seattle (I think that was several years later). Nothing in common, he and I, except we were both good hearted gay men who for a six month time frame were in a relationship. Fast forward to 1997. He is longing to see me one last time, from his death bed. He told his companion, while he lay dying, that I was the nicest person that he ever met. Oh my God. That is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said about me. I don’t even know if I feel worthy of such praise. But he also said that he did not think that I would not want to see him. I have reflected all week as to why he would have such an idea. Someday I will write about this event in full. A true cautionary tale of relationships. I did not know that he was dying. I had not heard from him in 12 years. Yet, as he faded, I was in a car driving 800 miles filled with joy at seeing him again, and making plans to spoil him rotten with lots of love, friendship and attention. Tragically, this gem of a person died the day before I arrived. But the seeds he planted took root in me, and drove deep to the center of my soul. A part of him will now live on in me, forever and ever until the day I die, and beyond. So I end this week’s soup with Aretha Franklin’s (a true genius) version of Wholy Holy. For those of you who think that I am stridently anti-religious, guess again. I am just full of surprises -- a bit like those Russian nesting dolls, or to paraphrase Winston Churchill, I am "...a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma". Or so I have been told. Once again, someday I shall tell the whole story of Lonnie and I, and of the circumstances of his death. All of this makes it's way into this week's soup. You can get your 31.2 Mb bowl of Saturday Night Soup for the Soul by clicking the Soul jukebox.