Peeks Around
Jun. 1st, 2006 12:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
itsallovernowETA: I've missed a slew of birthdays lately, including ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ropo, monkeyfromhell, bheerfan, and fbf (although I was there for her birthday, so it's not like I really forgot:) Happy birthday ladies. May the coming year bring everything you've hoped for, and everything you deserve!
I've got a zillion icons that I've never uploaded and a zillion user pic places. I clearly need to merge the two things!
Getting on a plane tonight at 1:00 a.m. and have finally accepted that between now and then I will not lose 20 lbs, get my hair dyed, write a best-selling novel or bear a child. Acceptance is key, right?
There's a book that was just published about the music scene that rose up in Laurel Canyon in the early 1970's and I've read mixed reviews of it (although the reviewers often seem to judge the book based upon their own interpretations and reactions to the music that arose out of that place and era and less upon the book or any of its descriptions or revelations).
I find this interesting on a variety of levels, partly because of where I live and partly because of how much that particular musical culture has influenced me. (And yes, I can forgive them for "Our House." Everyone gets overwhelmed by joyous domesticity once in a while). But the music that came out of there - Crosby, Stills and Nash; Joni Mitchell; The Mamas and the Papas (sort of); Jim Morrison, etc. This is classic 70's americana. It's not the anger and the raucousness of the British response to the late '60s/early 70s. It's not psychadelic, it's not funk, it's words and music and subtle irony and sunshine and peace, love and understanding and the fragility of those utopias.
And it's the stuff I was raised on, in addition to the hard core rebellion and psychadelics and throw off your chains and fight against the man and learn how to rock.
I was sitting in the car listening to an interviewer talk to the author and he mentioned Joni Mitchell and how autobiographical some of her work was, that the women in "Ladies of the Canyon" were women that she'd known, and I almost crashed the car realizing that this song that I've heard hundreds of times, that comes off one of my mom's favorite albums, that I associate so strongly with images of sunshine and Saturday mornings and the jump-scratch of this on a turntable - this song was about Laurel Canyon. This childhood memory, this sense memory, visceral and perfect and tangible, is about the place where I live. And I've never known it. While I realize that it has nothing to do with me, with the life I'm leading, there's was something startling and reassuring about realizing that those pieces of my life had come together without my knowing it. I don't believe much in fate or in signs, but this felt like something, a path or direction, a little surety at a time when I've been living with a lot of doubt.
Because maybe it means I am in the right place, not here by accident, but for a purpose. Maybe I am doing the right thing. Or maybe it's just a delicious coincidence and the realization hit at a time when I needed it most.
Either way, music has always guided my ideals and my realizations, and I'm pleased to know that seeds planted before I can remember than can still come to fruition nearly 32 years later.
ropo, monkeyfromhell, bheerfan, and fbf (although I was there for her birthday, so it's not like I really forgot:) Happy birthday ladies. May the coming year bring everything you've hoped for, and everything you deserve!I've got a zillion icons that I've never uploaded and a zillion user pic places. I clearly need to merge the two things!
Getting on a plane tonight at 1:00 a.m. and have finally accepted that between now and then I will not lose 20 lbs, get my hair dyed, write a best-selling novel or bear a child. Acceptance is key, right?
There's a book that was just published about the music scene that rose up in Laurel Canyon in the early 1970's and I've read mixed reviews of it (although the reviewers often seem to judge the book based upon their own interpretations and reactions to the music that arose out of that place and era and less upon the book or any of its descriptions or revelations).
I find this interesting on a variety of levels, partly because of where I live and partly because of how much that particular musical culture has influenced me. (And yes, I can forgive them for "Our House." Everyone gets overwhelmed by joyous domesticity once in a while). But the music that came out of there - Crosby, Stills and Nash; Joni Mitchell; The Mamas and the Papas (sort of); Jim Morrison, etc. This is classic 70's americana. It's not the anger and the raucousness of the British response to the late '60s/early 70s. It's not psychadelic, it's not funk, it's words and music and subtle irony and sunshine and peace, love and understanding and the fragility of those utopias.
And it's the stuff I was raised on, in addition to the hard core rebellion and psychadelics and throw off your chains and fight against the man and learn how to rock.
I was sitting in the car listening to an interviewer talk to the author and he mentioned Joni Mitchell and how autobiographical some of her work was, that the women in "Ladies of the Canyon" were women that she'd known, and I almost crashed the car realizing that this song that I've heard hundreds of times, that comes off one of my mom's favorite albums, that I associate so strongly with images of sunshine and Saturday mornings and the jump-scratch of this on a turntable - this song was about Laurel Canyon. This childhood memory, this sense memory, visceral and perfect and tangible, is about the place where I live. And I've never known it. While I realize that it has nothing to do with me, with the life I'm leading, there's was something startling and reassuring about realizing that those pieces of my life had come together without my knowing it. I don't believe much in fate or in signs, but this felt like something, a path or direction, a little surety at a time when I've been living with a lot of doubt.
Because maybe it means I am in the right place, not here by accident, but for a purpose. Maybe I am doing the right thing. Or maybe it's just a delicious coincidence and the realization hit at a time when I needed it most.
Either way, music has always guided my ideals and my realizations, and I'm pleased to know that seeds planted before I can remember than can still come to fruition nearly 32 years later.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 07:40 pm (UTC)And heck, don't worry about being something you're not this weekend. You're fabulous!
no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 07:43 pm (UTC)And I hope your birthday was wonderful!
no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 11:21 pm (UTC)and i love what you said about music. some of my best early memories are lying in bed at night and listening to whatever classical music album my parents had on the stereo. oh, and gilbert and sullivan.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 11:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 11:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 09:24 am (UTC)Sorry, just surfing past via the Crankster :)
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 04:51 pm (UTC)