Friday Music Post

I used to have Cat Stevens' Greatest Hits on vinyl but when I ditched all my vinyl a number of years ago (my turntable croaked and I didn't think I'd replace it) I couldn't find that title on CD. So I got another Cat Stevens hits collection but discovered later that it did not contain the song "Ready" which I love. So recently I purchased Cat Stevens' Greatest Hits on CD.

So for your listening pleasure, Cat Stevens "Ready":

Luddites Unite!

I think that more and more technology is basically ruining everything.

It is my considered opinion that technology has ruined popular music. Peer-to-peer file sharing, music downloads, streaming services have all be destroyed music as a viable career for many artists that were really good. Why you ask? Only huge artists that were big before the big tech eruption of twenty years ago are really making any money, or so it seems. My music teacher basically agrees with this, he feels the whole music download thing has made a situation for musicians go from bad to worse. Now some might argue that there are some great talents out there that never would have gotten any exposure but now with the Internet, YouTube, Facebook and other social media outlets they can self-publish and get recognized for their talents without the middle-man record company. This might even be true, but I feel like this has destroyed more than it has given us. Sounds like the record business is a pretty shady business in the first place, but it's even less attractive for good acts now.

Just my humble opinion, pretty much fact free. Feel free to correct me.

Putting the "Fun" back in Funeral

I'm kind of Mr. Introspection these days. I think when I pass, if I am given something of a standard funeral, I think I'd like this song played in the proceedings at some point. I'm at an age where I find myself looking back a lot more lately and it makes you think.

"Time" by the Alan Parson's Project:

Eulogy for my brother

This was originally written in August 2014, after my eldest brother passed away. I saw it in draft status and decided to publish it. I'm sure I wanted to say much, much more.

No one asked me to eulogize my brother. I want to do it, but will probably not get a chance.

I have a lot of things I want to say about my brother and his passing but I am going to start with something that was found among his photographs we searched while looking for pictures of him when he was married and his family was young. We wanted to have some photos of him with his children and what we found was a wallet card, the kind you might buy at a stationary store. It said:

Don't Quit

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
when the road your trudging seems all up hill,
when the funds are low, and the debts are high,
and you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
when care is pressing you down a bit,
rest if you must but don't you quit,

Life is odd with its twists and turns,
as everyone of us sometimes learn,
and many a failure turns about,
when he might have won had he stuck it out,
Don't give up though the pace seems slow
you may succeed with another blow

Success is failure turned inside out
the silver tint of the clouds of doubt
and you can never tell how close you are
It may be near when it seems so far
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit
It's when things seem worse
that you must not quit.

And even before we found this, I had already realized that this sort of thing epitomized my brother. I told him on many occasions about my admiration for this ability of his to keep going in spite of everything that had happened to him, especially in the last 7 years or so. When he lay in hospital, and we all knew he was dying, I repeated to him how I admired him for his tenacity in spite of the odds.

My brother was a pretty humble guy most of the time. He was an ordinary working guy, an organization man, that is until the organization vanished. My brother worked hard and he worked a lot. From my perspective he gave until it hurt. It hurt him, it hurt his family but he was at work a lot and rare was the day he called in sick or went to the doctor. When his work went away, they paid him a few weeks severance, It might have amounted to a month or so of pay. The company certainly wasn't going to pay people like Paul what they deserved after decades of dedicated service and sacrifice. This was the first of many trials and tribulations my brother would have to face in the next 7 years. The lack of full-time employment that paid a living wage, a heart attack, a quadruple by-pass, loss of his home, bankruptcy and finally cancer. I had run out of happy talk for my brother a long time ago, I could see how things were shaping up for him. He had persevered through so many things and did it pretty cheerfully most of the time. Yeah there times he was down, lamenting his misfortunes, but he had always gotten up, dusted himself off and kept on keeping on. What a tremendous example for his children. He was an easygoing guy, made friends easily, was a hard working guy and cared about his family. I told his son Jonathan, that in the end, his children, he in particular, was all that my brother had, it was all he had to live for.

Friends

I quit Facebook recently. I always knew it was a bad idea to ever join Facebook, but I am enough of an attention whore that I joined up, posted all sorts of pictures, talked about personal stuff, argued politics (for a time) and joined groups that interested me and then just got sick of feeding the beast. Plus the revelations about your personal info (big surprise there). I was sick of all the marketing, all the perfect statuses, the wonderful vacations, etc. I knew most of the people on my list and I knew that their lives are not that great all the time. In addition, it was a huge time waster.

So here am I using another digital psy-ops site (you think Google is going to do no evil, or whatever their bs motto is?) but I feel more in control here for some reason. I want to talk about friends.

I have learned, rather late in life, that you don't ever really have many friends. Not really good ones. Mostly we have friendly acquaintances. If you're lucky to have really good friends, take care of them. I learned, again late in life, who some of my better friends were. Unfortunately for me, one of them in particular, and his wife, have passed away. He, at 48 on his birthday, and she about 6 years later, just before their youngest child was about to graduate high school. Extremely tragic. The tragedy for me however was, I realized too late, what a good friend this guy was to me. He kept the friendship alive throughout the years even though I tended to neglect it. He kept trying to keep it alive and kept reaching out to me, inviting me to be his better friend. I failed and all too late realized what a wonderful friend he was. Every time I think of this person, I cannot help but choke down the tears but honestly, most of the time, I just let them flow.

I have also learned that your family is often your truest source of friends. I've lost two sisters and a brother in the last 12 years and in the case of my brother in particular, I feel that loss most acutely. He and I were friends, we spent time together, we "hung out", had many common interests from our youth, even through he was ten years older than I. He was a bit of a mentor in some ways when I was young, as was my other brother who is still with us. It pains me to think I will never see him again, never enjoy his company, camaraderie or his support. He is, like my friend who died on his birthday, an irreplaceable loss. I still have my wife, my brother, my wife's brother, my son but I do not feel like my friends, even those who claim to be my best, oldest friends, really care one whit about me and that can only engender he same feelings within me towards them.

So, if you have a good, true friend, try to take good care of them, you don't get many in this life.

Happy Thursday

This tune was on my mind, so I'll share with my readership.

Arrested Development

Alone

I feel alone a lot these days. Occasionally lonely, but mostly just alone. I've been alright with being alone because as a child being alone was at a premium so I kind of treasured solitude. In a way I still do. I'm talking about on our journey in life. We are all alone, ultimately. We have our parents and our spouses, children, siblings, extended family and our very close friends, but over time, we lose them in one form or another and even in their company we are alone. As a young person, you seldom realize it, or think of it in that way but I have found as I have gotten older, that we are alone. No one can really share your thoughts, your feelings, your pain, your joy, or even your beliefs. You are a universe unto yourself. Alone. I've realized lately that we really need to love ourselves. Not in a selfish or self-centered way but in sort of a kind way. We must be kind to ourselves and give ourselves a certain amount of leeway for our feelings or our behavior (provided it's not off the charts of acceptable norms). I've lost 3 siblings in the last 11 or so years now, a brother and sister in the last 3. I watched them die, alone. People around them, but they were in themselves alone. No husband, no son or daughter, no brother or sister can relieve that aloneness, that apartness. They entered this world alone and they left it, alone. This realization has prompted sadness for me, to realize that I am alone in the universe and that my loved ones, my wife, my son, the whole of my family, my good friends, all exist in this universe as solitary beings. I think it's important to have a certain amount of mental/emotional toughness to be able to confront this reality and to endure your life as you must, alone. I have been noticing that as I grow older I am becoming more and more emotional, more prone to express my feelings, to privately cry to grieve this loss. The loss of illusory connectedness to people, places and things. I feel like I need to take a deep dive into myself. To work on myself, to be kind to myself and show the people closest to me, a better me.