Thursday, July 10, 2014

FLEET OF A BILLION WORDS

Buck rightly took me to task for sending to a well deserved oblivion some posts about democrats and climate scarers causing genital warts. It's all true and I have models that show that, but never mind. We were running on empty. He reminded me of the music. Music is one of the best paths to memories, if you like it.

It doesn't matter what you say though, music is a direct path into anybody's memory. If not the music of the times, then the music of life. No, not the music of the era, but the music of what brought the world to life when it mattered more than you imagined. We all have that. It can be the most obtuse music of life and still, in the memory, it brings back that day, that instant, like nothing else. I don't have anything from the time which is no more, but I do have fun memories of sound with my daughter. Red neck yacht club and beer for my horses, whiskey for my men is as good as it gets for bringing the past to life with my little pilot.

I can hear "ode to joy" almost anytime and go back. It's like 'Scotland the Brave'. The memory that abides were playing both Scotland the Brave and Baba O'Reilly to wake people to the day back when we, who were awake, enjoyed that prerogative.  It was a short lived time back when life and death merged far closer than most of the guys knew. Sometimes the cat got out of the bag and they suspected, but not because we weren't trying really hard to convince them that we knew what we were doing.  All of us went into the field, only 5 or 6 of us actually knew the grisly details... if we did it right.

We really worked hard to make it the most boring thing in life.


2 comments:

Buck said...

You're SO right about the music and memories. Sometimes I revel in it, sometimes I curse it. But I'm always thankful for it, regardless.

"Who's Next" is their BEST, hands down.

HMS Defiant said...

It's funny. If I rummage around in my car I could probably pull out the Who's Next album but the skipper of the time asked to "borrow" my tape of the massed highland bands playing many catchy bagpipe, bugle and drum tunes such as, Scotland the Brave, which is what I used one morning over the ship's loud speakers to hold reveille before entering the fields that day. He threw it overboard.