Another cassette in the tape deck of my life

(Photo property of Google) It's ironic when you think about it, but whenever I download music onto my iPod more often than not it's from the 90's, late 80's and sometimes when I cast aside my cynical eye on music of the 2000's, I'll download a few tunes from this decade as well.

Now obviously I'm not the only one who downloads old music onto my iPod, and I also know music from the 80's and 90's isn't all that old, but I guess what I'm getting at is...even as the technology I use to download music, like my iPod Nano - nope, I still don't have an iTouch but they look awesome! - the music I download sure isn't going forward, so to speak, but is instead going backward. How so, you ask? Well, let me tell you!

And here my friends, is where the title for today's post comes in. You see, I love metaphors and use them to describe different aspects of my life. Now I'm sure if you've read my blog regularly you would be familiar with the metaphor I often use to describe my mind, or my conscious, or my memory...which is that rambling, narrow-corridor room of burnt or faded yellow filing cabinets with their overstuffed drawers and dented, rusted doors where all my haphazard thoughts for stories and every day life are crammed in non-alphabetical order and the floorboards upon which each row of cabinets sits sags and the gaps between the floorboards allow random sheets to fall through, and sometimes they become a topic for a novella or blog post. Have I mentioned I love metaphors? Well anyway, the one that I was supposed to be talking about is the one hinted at in today's blog post. I think I first talked about in a failed novella series I tried to write about two or three summers ago called Wide Open Spaces. So long ago was this in fact that I can only remember the metaphor vaguely, but then again I only need a crumpled sheet of paper to fall between those cracks with vague and faded scribblings on it to start something now don't I? And additionally, I'm rambling on about this vague notion aren't I? You're probably waiting for me to get to the point aren't you? Well, the truth is, so am I! Sometimes I think I'm a passive spectator to my own writing, like I'm not even sitting in this chair right now, but as for who is writing? That's a mystery to me, folks!

Instead of saying anyway again, I'll just reveal the mystery to this tape deck metaphor. As I was explaining before some external force took over my keyboard, a while back in a failed novella series I had mentioned somewhere along the line that everyone's life comes with a tape deck, and what I mean by that is - yes, I know more 90's talk! I can't tell you how deep I am in the 90's! - I picture everyone driving along every day in their lives with this huge wall of tape decks behind them, and every day these different tapes play, are they songs? are they moments? are they words? I'm not sure, I guess they could be all of those things and more. But I guess what the main thing that metaphor was about is also what today's post is supposed to be about: recently I've gotten back into the music of David Meece. Now if that name doesn't ring a bell somewhere within the music-loving section of your brain, I wouldn't be surprised, because you see David Meece was a huge Christian/Pop artist in - you guessed it! - the 90's! and when I was younger and learning how to ride my bike without training wheels and failing my parents would bring me to these therapeutic riding programs so I could learn to balance and therefore ride my bike successfully!

Well on the way there and back my parents would play David Meece tapes in their 1994 Dodge Caravan - which my dad still drives, lol! - and I vividly remember those humid, brightly-lit summer days riding in the van - which was still new back then! or more new than it is today, lol - and listening to the music of David Meece, and even after decades of not hearing or purposely seeking out his music online or otherwise, I could still remember the lyrics and that blissful, inimitable sound of the 90's that I love so much and find so inspirational. Well the remembering the lyrics stuff could be due to the fact that I have an uncanny ability to remember song lyrics after only a few times of listening to any one song, but that's beside the point! My mind is like a sponge that only soaks up a certain kind of water, and more often than not it's that murky, questionable stuff that huddles in the potholes of country roads, or the bottom of an unwashed glass at your grandpa's house he somehow keeps looking over every time you visit him.

Why did I get back into David Meece's music? Well I think it all boils down to me wanting to recapture that certain tape deck of that moment of my life. I mean, don't we all look back on our childhoods and want to recapture something, and I guess for me the simplest and most effective way to do that is through music. Now granted, I'm not going to recapture all of the music, only the stuff that I can see myself listening to for decades after, which is why I downloaded several David Meece songs onto my iPodsome modern music residing on my iPod, but it's few and far between, and probably always will be. I guess...and here comes another metaphor folks!!! - when I think about music of the 90's and the music of today I picture myself standing in the middle of a narrow, dilapidated country road that continues ahead of me in its currently crumbling and pockmarked state where leaning wooden and rusting barbed wire fences border it and equally leaning and paint-stripped abandoned houses yearning for a gentle touch and a lingering eye dot its waist-high swaying grasses with their smooth, Summer wind whispers and behind me that same country road broadens and becomes a smooth, glistening blacktopped road that leads to a city jutting and spiraling into the sky where it slices wounds deep and feeds on the blood that pours down, where cars glint sharply in the sun, snarling poison into the air, where bars curl over windows like hooded eyes averting your stare, lips clamping tight so they won't have to utter that single word...hello, and I find myself - obviously! - turning towards that crumbling road, finding beauty in its neglected state, the simpleness of that beauty, and my heart bursts and floods me to my trembling lips with a liquid flow of emotion and I run towards those leaning houses, divided between leaving them as they are and nudging them towards something similar. But then I would run the risk of dragging them into the modern world and that would be unforgivable.

And such is the extent to my obsession with old houses! As you can see. But after all, it is the countryside, old houses, abandoned old houses and old things in general! - like music, cars and whatnot - that have fueled my love of metaphors to begin with. And as a conclusion!! Next week I will discuss my future dream of one day living in several different decades - or eras, whatever the heck you want to call them! - at once. Confused? Well, then you'll have to wait 'til next week Wednesday to have clarification! Perhaps I will too. ;)