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Sunday, October 28, 2018

The Screeching Halt

At some point in my life, I had given up on new music. Instead, I listened to the old stuff over and over again. Books were the same. I reread books from my past, often more than once, but ignored books that had just come out. Somewhere along the way, time seemed to have come to a screeching halt. 
--Killing Commendatore, Haruki Murakami

Well, it's true. I often find myself rereading books I have,already read, revisiting favorite movies from the past. Is this because books and movies used to be better? Probably not. I have found a handful of contemporary writers whom I am quite fond off--Haruki Murakami and Yu Hua to name two--and there have been some worthwhile movies, although I suppose that truly worthwhile movies have always been few and far between. Nonetheless, I return again and again to things that have laid hold of me in the past--Shane, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, The Odd Couple, Empire of the Sun, To Kill a Mockingbird; Hawthorne, Fitzgerald, Twain, Hugo, Melville, and so on. 

Do we go back looking for what we may have missed in narrative, meaning; or do we go back in the desire to recapture what we are missing now? Are we, perhaps, searching for threads of the life we have left behind? 

A fellow asked the other day what sort of music I like. What came to mind was Debussy, Chopin, Glenn Miller, Sinatra, The Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Euryhmics.  Who listens to that stuff anymore? What he meant, of course, was contemporary music, a category for which I could not find a single name or song. 

Has the music we loved and still love been long since set like a score to the essential narrative of a life that finds itself, in old age, mostly lived? Do we listen in order to meet ourselves again somewhere along that long and winding road? 

Are these the rocks we cling to as time comes to a screeching halt?

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