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On age and time...
Aug. 22nd, 2006 12:32 pmAngels fall like rain
And love is all of heaven away
Inside you the time moves
And she don't fade
-- The Psychedelic Furs, The Ghost in You
This weekend, Christey and I were painting the condo and she had a mix-CD of 80s/90s covers. This song was one of them. Even though I'm listening to the cover again as I write this, all I can hear is Richard Butler's raspy drawl.
Not for the first time in the last decade, I can understand the Boomers who annoyed us so in the 1980s, with their weepiness over "Me & Bobby McGee" and "White Rabbit", not to mention weirdly named bands like Country Joe & the Fish who were meaningless to those of us peering from underneath our spiked new-wave hair.
The music is fine, but the memories attached to a song 20 years removed mean far more than the lyrics or instrumentation. I browsed a website today about "The Ghost in You" saying the album itself typifies the Furs, who, "with this darkly cynical fair, expressed perfectly the detachment of the times and the itchy struggle of a generation trying to find meaning at the dawn of the Information Age." That description resonates with me like a tuning fork in a concert hall, yet to anyone under 30 it's probably melodramatic, meaningless, or possibly even yawn inducing.
Listening to this song brings back a cascade of memories most interesting because they are so mundane. Mainly things I was doing on the borderline between High School and college, including memories before this song was even released -- such is the power of genre. Driving to work or school, friends, girls, that sort of thing. It didn't mark my first kiss or first concert, it wasn't the song that was playing at the moment a relationship ended, it was just one of those songs that was on at the time.
I don't mean to seem weepy and maudlin on this, the day that marks the beginning of my last year prefixed with a "3". Turning 30 bothered me deeply, and oddly, given my reflex fatalism. In fact, it bothered me from 29 to 32. I don't have any problem with the four-oh on the horizon.
Birthdays are meant for introspection, however, and the backward-looking perspective that spans decades is often powerful, and often spooky.
And love is all of heaven away
Inside you the time moves
And she don't fade
-- The Psychedelic Furs, The Ghost in You
This weekend, Christey and I were painting the condo and she had a mix-CD of 80s/90s covers. This song was one of them. Even though I'm listening to the cover again as I write this, all I can hear is Richard Butler's raspy drawl.
Not for the first time in the last decade, I can understand the Boomers who annoyed us so in the 1980s, with their weepiness over "Me & Bobby McGee" and "White Rabbit", not to mention weirdly named bands like Country Joe & the Fish who were meaningless to those of us peering from underneath our spiked new-wave hair.
The music is fine, but the memories attached to a song 20 years removed mean far more than the lyrics or instrumentation. I browsed a website today about "The Ghost in You" saying the album itself typifies the Furs, who, "with this darkly cynical fair, expressed perfectly the detachment of the times and the itchy struggle of a generation trying to find meaning at the dawn of the Information Age." That description resonates with me like a tuning fork in a concert hall, yet to anyone under 30 it's probably melodramatic, meaningless, or possibly even yawn inducing.
Listening to this song brings back a cascade of memories most interesting because they are so mundane. Mainly things I was doing on the borderline between High School and college, including memories before this song was even released -- such is the power of genre. Driving to work or school, friends, girls, that sort of thing. It didn't mark my first kiss or first concert, it wasn't the song that was playing at the moment a relationship ended, it was just one of those songs that was on at the time.
I don't mean to seem weepy and maudlin on this, the day that marks the beginning of my last year prefixed with a "3". Turning 30 bothered me deeply, and oddly, given my reflex fatalism. In fact, it bothered me from 29 to 32. I don't have any problem with the four-oh on the horizon.
Birthdays are meant for introspection, however, and the backward-looking perspective that spans decades is often powerful, and often spooky.
