DreamingWithNeilVille
I am now officially seventeen years from retirement.
Which is a very weird place to be.
Indeed.
****
It was a full on, weekend long, celebration that began with a gigantic ice cream cake from the Lab and my Girls on Friday afternoon.
And it was highlighted by a visit from my Dad.
Saturday night after the root beer floats were done we watched one of my presents - the recent Johnathan Demme concert movie about our Neil.
And it was good.
And I couldn't help but notice both the backwards and the forwards to the summing up that was so much a part of it all.
Which was most apparent when Shakey talked about his 21 year old daughter and the songs he once wrote for girls of that age and the songs he writes now for empty nesting geezers.
But there was something else there that I couldn't quite put my finger on - something simultaneously elegaic and elusive.
****
The weekend came to an end on a rainswept Sunday night.
C. went back to Victoria with my Dad to give a workshop tomorrow.
I picked up little e. from a birthday party.
Bigger E. got much of the dinner ready while I went out to the garage to work on the garbage wall still left over from the Great Lotusland strike of 2007.
And then, later, we all wound down.
And at bedtime I played 'Old Man' in the dark and tried to hit every high note.
And when I was done, like Neil, I realized I was a pretty damned lucky guy.
Why?
Because, while I've never written a song for my own old man, I reckon that I once wrote him a pretty decent thank-you note.
And, besides, I'm only 48. So there's still lots of time to put something together for him with my lousy playing and Bigger E's fabulous voice, if I can ever figure out how to use that darned Garageband properly.
****
Later, when the house was quiet, I headed down to the Subterranean Blues Room (a.k.a. the basement) and popped on the headphones to listen to Jim and Greg on Sound Opinions while I tried to crank through a somewhat leaden thesis that I should have finished Friday before I headed for home.
If you've never heard it, Sound Opinions is a little like Rob and Barry from High Fidelity ten years after, if they had actually managed to grow up and start working for a living.
In other words it's fantastic stuff for middle-aged guys of a certain age and world view.
Guys, I guess, like me.
Anyway, this time it was Jim's job to pick a song for the 'Desert Island Jukebox' which is exactly what you would expect it to be.
And the tune he picked, in a bizarre but fitting tribute to Mr. Young's latest, Chrome Dreams II, was Powderfinger, both for the power and the passion of the guitar and for the enigmatic elegy of the lyrics.
Which, of course, was the thing I couldn't quite put my finger on last night while watching the movie while I sat beside my Dad on the couch.
Why?
Because, as the other Sound Opinions guy, Greg, suggested it appears that Neil has entered a period that, despite his myriad periods that have already passed, most of us never thought we would ever see.
Which is his 'gospel' period.
And somehow, even for an avowed non-believer like me, this makes a weird kind of sense.
Weird but true.
In fact, very very true.
OK?
_____
*For the record, my Dad bought 'Harvest' for my brothers and me in, I believe, 1973; 'On The Beach' quickly followed, which was a strange brew indeed for that particular time and place. At least if you were a kid coming of age in Victoria B.C.
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