If You Could Hear Me Think, This Is What I'd Write, 1/18/23

TO BE PLAYED AT MAXIMUM VOLUME

I don’t know that I am necessarily big on New Year’s resolutions. What I do seem to get hung up on though, is the post-NYE idea that over the coming year, I’m going to adopt all kinds of daily, weekly, and monthly habits. Which I suppose are indeed New Year’s resolutions.

Take, for example, this website. At New Year’s I had the notion, which I’ve clearly been nursing for a while, that I was going to take the time to make at least one weekly posting here, probably on Wednesdays.

Having a weekly column here is a fine idea, and probably manageable, but then I complicated the issue by deciding each week that this column would be broken down into specific sub-sections, and that I’d include each of these subsections every week. Theoretically, that’s a cool idea, but it’s just not practical.

For example, I planned to write each week about some old album in my collection, along with some brand new just-released-this-week album. This idea came about mostly because I was so fired up by Iggy Pop’s new Every Loser album the first few days after it’s January 6th release.

I still like this idea and I still plan on writing about old and new music here, but I’m not going to force myself to do this every single week, especially when I have a week like this one, where all I really listen to is The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. “TO BE PLAYED AT MAXIMUM VOLUME”, Bowie printed on the back cover and, damn, he was right.

[Yes, I could write a bit about the Ziggy Stardust album here, but what could I possibly say that could top “TO BE PLAYED AT MAXIMUM VOLUME”? Nothing, that’s what. And I now seem to have moved on to Low anyway.]

All of this is to say that I still plan to check in here each week with a Wednesday column called “If You Hear Me Think, This Is What I’d Write”, but I’m not going to impose too strict a structure on myself. Some weeks I’ll write more than other weeks. The old music/new music pieces will pop up, just not every week. And definitely not this week: I have an album released on Jan. 13 to write about, but haven’t listened to it enough [Thanks, Ziggy…] to give it any sort of fair assessment, even a brief one.

Every week will include a work of MonkArt though. That’ll be the piece that will tie all this together.

And now, a dream…

JET PACKS AND POPCORN CARTS (A DREAM)

I had this dream early in the morning on January 14:

I am in Acadia National Park in Maine. I come up to a lake. I’m either walking or driving, don't remember which. I want to enjoy Acadia, but I am upset by its commercialization. For example, I could see various people flying through the air in the park using very elaborate jetpacks.

So I decide to cross a bridge to get to what I think will be a more remote section of the park. Before I cross the bridge, I walk to the lake and just barely stick my feet into the water.

Then I am across the bridge and walking along a crowded sidewalk in what is clearly not a remote area. I see a stainless steel cart that appears to be filled with some kind of soil. A woman (I don’t know/remember who it was) says something like “Oh, that’s Lee Gutman’s popcorn cart,” Lee Gutman being a retiree from the organization where I work. I have not seen her in years.

I say something like “What, Lee’s going to try to sell popcorn again?” Then, I turn around to see Lee smiling sheepishly yet slyly at me, as if to say “Yeah, I guess I am going to sell popcorn again.”

<end of dream>

THE [UPCOMING] ADVENTURES OF A CEMETERY TOUR GUIDE

I will be leading three public tours at Laurel Hill Cemetery this year, in addition to the nighttime Soul Crawl tours in October. All three of my tours are now listed on Laurel Hill’s website. Here are the links to LHC’s site, and a description of each tour. Click the title links for more information at Laurel Hill’s website.

Hot Spots and Storied Plots. Saturday, Feb. 11 10:00 a.m. — Noon. This is a general interest tour, though depending on the guide, each of these tours is different. Always a good introduction to Laurel Hill Cemetery.

Heavenly Intonations: Laurel Hill’s Musical Legacy. Sunday, Aug. 20, 10:00 a.m. — Noon. This tour is all about music! And, as far as I know, it’s the only LHC tour whose title was inspired by Pee Wee Herman’s Christmas special.

Laurel Hill Encounters from Thomas P. Cope’s Diary. Saturday, Sept. 30, 1:00 — 3:00 p.m. This will be the debut of a new tour that I am developing, based on entries from the real-life diary of a 19th century Philadelphia merchant and civic leader. This promises to be a fascinating and quirky deep-dive, featuring Laurel Hill “permanent residents” who are rarely included on any other tours.

And there you have it. Come on out and let me show you around a wildly cool cemetery sometime!

AND FINALLY…

As always, thanks to the guys in Poison for crafting the finest lyric in all of pop metal history.