Word of the Day
Verdant (adj., VURR-dent)
Green with growth, grass, and vegetation. Healthy and growing.
Gif of the Day
Sir Paul McCartneyThis Guy!Not that guyPoint!Exciteable peopleDrive my bus?
Link of the Day
Everything Changes - Songs as Time Machines
Somewhat related to yesterday's memory access, another great newsletter focused on how songs can function as time machines, taking us back to specific, vivid memories. There's a number included in the newsletter and many more at a link in it. Here's one of the best:
My older brother’s room with the pink and orange shag carpeting. YES I AM OLD.
It was the title track to the first LP I ever bought with my own money (soon to be followed by Chicago VI and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road). I remember walking to National Record Mart (!) to buy it for $3.99 plus tax. I remember bringing it home and getting mad at my brother for taking the shrink wrap off before I could. Because it was *mine.*
The song itself was so stupid, insipid and happy, so mindlessly joyful — a pop gem slathered in honey. “Well it’s about you/ that I am/ Whoa whoa.” I mean come on.
But when I hear that first low piano note, the anticipatory hi hat and kick drum, none of that matters. (It’s exactly why the soundtrack to Guardians of the Galaxy spoke to people my age but probably annoyed most everyone else.) When I hear Diamond Girl I am eight years old, watching the Warner Brothers label in the middle of the turntable going round and round, studying the gate-fold cover and the pictures of these two beatific Bahá’í dudes who look like they just wandered in from the set of a Western.
I am singing along, making plans to eat a Pop-Tart, watch Star Trek reruns and bounce a pink Super Ball off of the neighbor’s steps. It is a kind of peace.
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