Dawn Is Me

We took Gina back to Ithaca today. I don’t know why I should have found that trip so exhausting but I’m ready to crash.

I sometimes think I would be much happier if I lived by myself. I haven’t done that very many times in my life and, when I have, it has usually been associated with being in a school dormitory with a single.

I feel like I’m going to keel over, dead asleep, any second now but I still have to go do the dishes. It’s actually Kimmie’s turn to do them but she has refused (as usual), so somebody has to do them (also as usual).

See, if I lived by myself, I wouldn’t have to argue with anybody about doing the dishes.

I wouldn’t have to listen to people being gratuitously mean to each other.

I wouldn’t have to deal with people who are so plastic and fake that I can hardly stand to talk to them.

I wouldn’t have to be surrounded by a whole mess of people, not one of whom gives a rat’s ass about whether I’m happy or not, regardless of all the lip service about how important Mom is in the household.

They lie. I’m not important to them. They don’t even care that I’m here. Not one of them.

Which means I probably shouldn’t be here.

“If she calls me a cunt one more time, I’m gonna smash her face into the ground.”

This is what I heard first thing yesterday morning. In fact, it is what dragged me from the “cloying mists of sleep.”

Not my preferred way of waking up but there was worse to come.

“Oh, and you can tell her than George and I had sex. George didn’t want her to know but, if he’s gonna treat me like shit, then I’m gonna tell her.”

Ooooo-kay, and that’s really just way more than I ever wanted to know about my neighbors in any lifetime.

Fortunately, before this sort of thing had the chance to give me nightmares, I got to rediscover some old musical friends: Earth, Wind & Fire.

If you are my age, you ought to know who they were with no further explanation on my part. If you are, say, my daughters’ ages, you probably have no clue.

I’m going to give you some examples, in chronological order. First up is one of those tunes that has always fondly lived in my memory on the list of Music To Get Laid By:

This next one is a true R&B classic, from the undisputed very best album the band ever did:

This last one I’m sharing with you was a tough call. It’s from Faces, released in 1980, the last of EWF’s truly great albums. This one was a double set, too, which just made it that much better. This particular album has so many great songs on it, most of which just happen to be available on YouTube, that it was tough to decide which one to post here.

So, that is my contribution to your musical education.

They just don’t do it like this anymore. This is real musicianship, complex and interesting music with multi-cultural flavors and brilliant instrumental and vocal arrangements. This is what I was listening to in my teens and early twenties, and this is why I love music.

Not to mention the fact that this sort of stuff makes it really easy to forget about the neighbors who shout details of their sex lives in the middle of the street at 9 am on a Saturday morning.

Earth, Wind & Fire: still my cure for nightmares.