Remembering to be Grateful
My girlfriend, who may be the only reader of this blog, a genre that she is quickly losing her taste for, will not likely believe this, but I like listening to some of the songs by the Grateful Dead. And of course, it has nothing to do with their legendary reputation for consuming substances for recreational purposes. Instead, part of it comes from the half memories I have of the eighties when I was a kid who lived in a east coast college town. When I was about eight, most of the adults I knew were in the early twenties, and a majority of them (with the significant exception of my immediate family) were laid back, idealistic, people who'd rather spend all of their time listening to Donovan, building log cabins on the few small acres they owned in the woods, and figuring out how keep on keepin' on. Of course, as I was eight, this is significantly colored with the innocence and naivete of a child, so I couldn't have known about all of the context that I later found out on my own.
The music of the Grateful Dead brings some of this back. All of the associations I made between these laid back people and the idealism they had, combined with the childhood illusion that life was somehow simpler then. None of this probably makes sense to anyone but me. Therefore, all I can do is present this link, invite people to listen, and hope that maybe they feel a little something of what I feel when I listen. It's got more to do with nostalgia than anything else.
The music of the Grateful Dead brings some of this back. All of the associations I made between these laid back people and the idealism they had, combined with the childhood illusion that life was somehow simpler then. None of this probably makes sense to anyone but me. Therefore, all I can do is present this link, invite people to listen, and hope that maybe they feel a little something of what I feel when I listen. It's got more to do with nostalgia than anything else.
19 February 2004
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