And Now A Few Words About Turning 56

Another year older.

I turn 56 Tuesday.  Warren Zevon Turned 56 in 2003 and died of cancer later on.  He would have been 70 today.

The weather was shitty, it's been cloudy all this month and today was no different.  It sleeted on the way home from work.  I usually take the day off and go bargain hunting but since Mom postponed our lunch, I basically stayed home and played some Townedgers and my own music.

Sonya at work was kind enough to bring me a birthday cake to work.  Plus I had plenty of birthday wishes from abroad.  Plus I chatted with Brooksie off and on.  I love Sonya to pieces, I have known her for 20 years at work and seen her and her hubby Jason be a part of this life.  Brooksie is special to me, for 15 years we talk tunes and somehow kept in touch when the regular chatters at the Roost moved on to other things.   There's always hope we can get together somewhere down the road and hit some of the music places in Washington DC town.  And perhaps a record store or two although Borders is now a thing of the past.

I am getting up in years, to the point that I lost friends along the way in their 50s, Bruce was 57, and Warren Zevon was 56 as I mentioned before.  Although I am having a second life on stage, I do realize that I'm in the golden years of my life and each day could be the last.   It hasn't hit on me but to see my friends I grew up with, now bald and gray and grand kids makes me wonder where did the time go.   I am winding down, knowing after playing for a couple hours on stage, I need to go take a half hour nap to recover.  Or the constant aches and pains, yes I'm still got a 18 year old mindset but my body feels like 72 and somehow I feel those 56 years of being here.  I have a friend that is battling lung cancer and we're doing a benefit tomorrow for him.  He's getting his head shaved and he's going to give his best shot to beat cancer.  I pray that he does well.  I do not want to lose any more friends, but I'm sure that will continue.  For we are now getting old to the point that we are no longer younger and that time has continued onward without stopping at all.

Have I taken life for granted?  Was I continue to be blind of all the changes to me and my friends as they moved from music collecting to starting a family and career jobs, while I never strayed far from the local record store or thrift place full of scratchy records?   I can look at certain points of history and certain girls that did come in at those times that things could have changed, and watching a certain woman that was in my college class that liked me enough to smile at me at Kittys and when I sat there and did nothing, slowly leaving the place with her friend, crying that I didn't come over and say hi and disappointed in the outcome.  And I wished for a chance to see her and explain that I too shy the next time I see her.  Which never did happened and never will.  She'll never know it but I really was flattered that she did care.  Hardly anybody ever did back then.

For 56 times around the sun, my life was derailed by music and records, more so than going steady with anybody in high school.  Somewhere in the parallel world, the woman from my college class who be my soul mate as we make our way around the world buying records and CDs and spending copious amount of time playing them on the player, perhaps playing in a band together.  Or having our daughters playing guitar and singing songs at CSPS in town.  Or having a son being the next John Bonham or Keith Moon on drums.   I know it's a far fetched dream that will never come true, but I suppose if I had to do it all over again, I'd probably make the same fucking mistakes all over again and come to this stage of life anyway.

The trick is to see if I can be here another year but in reality I think I'd live my life the best way possible and hopefully if the time comes to pass on, then to turn on the record player and put on a Love Forever Changes and take a nap that takes me out of this world and into the next world, where souls live forever and never grow old and continue to seek out new music.

I think I have achieved what I set out to do in this life anyway.  It didn't make me a rock and roll star or rich and famous, but I did managed to get a nice music collection of records and a nice output of my own music.

My Birthday wasn't much.  But for those who wished me happy birthday remained the truest of friends.

And I love them all.

On Tuesday, we lost Percy Harris, one of my doctors back in the 70s.  He was 89.
And then Butch Trucks has died as well. The drummer for the Allman Brothers Band. He was 69.