Posted on 05/13/2009 12:23:58 PM PDT by FrPR
I would like to share, with you, my friends and fellow Freepers, a quite remarkable, somewhat complicated, and very personal experience in hopes you will find it as fascinating as I do! Also, I would like to hear your thoughts, comments and recollections, and perhaps learn of similar experiences.
The other day I awoke with an absolutely wonderful, driving, soaring pop song in my head, a song I had never before given any thought to, and which I had not heard in a very long time: Synchronicity II by The Police (1983). If you don't know the song, here it is:
http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/song/Synchronicity_II/7152202
Something about the hazy memory of that particular song made me quite emotional as I showered and shaved and prepared for work. I was mystified.
Please note that until now, I was never really a fan of The Police, and though I am an "Xer" I was very secluded from 'popular culture' in my youth and never once owned a recording of that song. In fact, I remembered NONE of the lyrics consciously with the exception of the very last words, "Many miles away... Many miles away" and when I got to the office, I had to sort of hum and yammer it for coworkers - and claim I was sure it was a "Sting" song - in order to try to learn the name of it.
Which took some time. My insistence irritated them, but the "song in my head" so possessed me that I pressed on.
Now: the day before this musical recollection, while commiserating and speculating on the subject of politics, taxes, and elections with my employer, our conversation turned to the poem The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats. You will maybe remember the provocative and surprising last lines in which a strange beast "emerges" in the scenic narrative:
The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The conversation, while on the disturbing topics of mounting taxes and impending limitations on first and second-amendment rights, was nevertheless interesting and pleasing to me, and especially memorable as it was a very "intellectual" conversation with "My Boss's Boss's Boss."
Now I recently moved away from the city and bought a new house in the suburbs. It is a very beautiful house, but along with the joys of my life, I have been - very consciously, with a new baby and a new wife and big bills to pay in a tough economy and a forty minute commute - feeling a special sort of angst on weekday mornings as I sometimes sense I am stepping robotically past the kitchen and the baby and the lawn mower and through the garage and into a near-replica of the opening scene from David Lynch's disturbing movie Blue Velvet (here it is:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM975_Ld9S0
In any case, fascinated by my sudden obsession with that obscure (to me) song, Synchronicity II, I found the lyrics online:
Another suburban family morning Grandmother screaming at the wall We have to shout above the din of our Rice Crispies We can't hear anything at all Mother chants her litany of boredom and frustration But we know all her suicides are fake Daddy only stares into the distance There's only so much more that he can take Many miles away Something crawls from the slime At the bottom of a dark Scottish lake
Many miles away There's a shadow on the door Of a cottage on the shore Of a dark Scottish lake Many miles away, many miles away...
I learned today, on Wikipedia, that the links between The Second Coming, Synchronicity, and Carl Jung's philosophies are no mystery. Sting certainly would be as familiar with the canonical poem as I or any other product of good Anglican secondary schools. These facts, however, make my personal experience no less astounding - to me.
A song about the unconscious - about an emergence, or revelation - emerges and reveals itself from my unconscious.
My mind recalls Synchronicity II - a song whose lyrics I never consciously knew and which I had perhaps last half-heard on the radio when I was in grade school - as a way of reconciling, and exorcising, some of my most private anxieties.
What do you think?
Someone in the band (Sting) was a former teacher. “Don’t Stabd So Close To Me”. A lot of his stuff was cranial which is odd considering it was “punk” back in the day.
My son (13) loves The Police and The Who.
“What do you think?”
Perhaps you should loosen your tie.
I think music can touch areas of the mind we aren’t usually aware of and you just had the experience of how powerfully that can pull things into focus. Now what you are supposed to do with your realization is another question that nobody here will probably have the answer to.
Back on your meds.
back away from the doobie and no one gets hurt...
But....
I had a dream one time while in my early years of undergrad study. I was there on a partial scholarship for soccer and was a backup goalkeeper my freshman year. In the dream I had, I was trying to watch a game through a doorway, but found my vision was blocked by the starting 'keeper. He suddenly grabbed his left knee and collapsed. I stepped over him and onto the field to see the game fine from there.
The next day I showed up early for our game and the starter was already there and had his knee bandaged. He had messed it up the day before and I was the starter for the next few games.
Sometimes these things happen (shrug).
Also, check out on You Tube “I Burn For You” by Sting (circa 1980) from a movie; it's great and not on any Police album
Nicely written and interesting. They say we only use 2% of our brain - so I suppose storing lyrics of once-heard songs from 20 years ago is what the other 98% is for.
As for what it means? Probably nothing.
I absolutely can not stand The Police. Sting is a whiny leftist poseur.
Sting is a former english teacher.
Why the “Blackwatch” badge on your page?
Just curious.
Regards,
AR
Growing up in the early 60’s, I did not own any records and only infrequently listened to music on the radio. When I did, instead of the Beatles, the Stones, the Doors, and so on, I liked Motown, which had comprehensible lyrics and was grounded in love, loss, and heartache. My tastes remain the same today, except for owing some classical music CDs.
We have to shout above the din of our Rice Krispies.
I had a dream before a big race. In my dream I saw my name start near the top and move down on the “finish” board. (It was a staggered start ski race). It was nicely printed on a placard and slipped into position like you see with the golfers. It ended up being the top 7 spots - and those top 7 went to “State”.
In real life a week later I saw my name near the top of the chalk board scrawled in chalk. It moved down the board as other racers came in. It ended up in 6th place - the last postion to be able to go to “State”! Weird.
Although during practice the coach was very into the whole “visualization” thing. And skiing for two hours every day in practice gives you plenty of time for your mind to focus on the “visualization”. (Beating a guy up the hill, coming to the finish line, standing on the podium, etc.)
I absolutely can not stand The Police. Sting is a whiny leftist poseur.
Synchronicity is on my top 10 list of all time best records. Both the title track and Synchronicity II are fantastic songs along with King of Pain, Every Breath You Take, Walking In Your Footsteps, etc.
From Synchronicity II, I love the line about the “Secretaries pout and preen like cheep tarts in a red light street, and all he ever thinks to do is watch.” Great writing.
“Every single meeting with his so-called superior is a humiliating kick in the crotch.”
IMO, some of the best Police songs are the one’s you hear the least on the radio, i.e., “Canary In a Coalmine,” “When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What’s Still Around,” “Driven To Tears,” “Tea In the Sahara,” etc.
Yes. When I raced bicycles my coach asked me to adopt a totem, which in my case was a spider. I would imagine myself a spider, dainty, light, and dangerous, when passing on a climb. It completely changed my game - I’d do these deadly hill-climb breakaways.
In cross-country running, a different coach suggested visualizing one’s footfalls from “underneath the earth” - to sort of see yourself from underneath. That, too, was a very effective mental tool. Paces lengthened and pain seemed to decrease on long races with this “out-of-body” technique.
But the totem thing was the coolest, for me.
Frankly, I don't know what it means, although I have had similar experiences myself. Better yet, I'd wake up with an entirely original song in my head (or one I didn't recognize, anyway), and promptly forgot it, my passport to the BILLBOARD HOT 100.
wow. it’s like you crawled in my head!
I suppose the song really does not have much of a “catchy melody,” per se, but it does have what I’d call a “driving beat.” I notice that the principal musical interval in the opening notes is the same as that of a French or British ambulance... But I don’t have sufficient musical literacy to describe the “melody” in words.
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
This song sums up my feelings every day as I too am “packed like lemmings into shiney metal boxes...”,getting on the PATH into Gotham.
I can totally relate to wondering how much more I can take.(The commute, not life)
Yeah, what he said...
You see, I was Buddy Holly's back-up pilot, and after the accident, (Look, I am really sorry I didn't make it to the airport in time to preflight, OK?... I told that Mexican guitar player, "Chico or Ricardo, whateva your name is, check the oil, comprendes? "so the oil didn't get checked and the fuel didn't get tested, and they took off without me with some pilot they met a Waffle House, OK? and also there was maybe something wrong with the carburetor heater and anyway, who in his right mind would dream that they would go up in a crate like that on a night like that anyway?)BTW, who was that Mexican kid anyway?
The guilt burdened me so, that I dropped out of Yale to become a classical 'cellist (and Chinese) and vowed to never listen to rock and roll again without written permission from Pat Boone and/or the Everly Brothers.
There is a slight chance I would have liked those louche, drug crazed, completely uneducated lower working-class yobbos from Liverpool who ripped off African-American music and helped turn our great country into a pot-snorting bunch of ani (Their name will come to me), but as they became popular, I found myself increasingly busy killing commies and practicing the 'cello.
So, compadre, I can not take your hand for this particular sentimental stroll down chemical memory lane. However, I am not a total curmudgeon. There are several nice people in your generation X, e.g., you, your wife, and my many offspring.
The next day I showed up early for our game and the starter was already there and had his knee bandaged. He had messed it up the day before and I was the starter for the next few games.
Sometimes these things happen (shrug).
I had a dream before a big race. In my dream I saw my name start near the top and move down on the “finish” board. (It was a staggered start ski race). It was nicely printed on a placard and slipped into position like you see with the golfers. It ended up being the top 7 spots - and those top 7 went to “State”.
In real life a week later I saw my name near the top of the chalk board scrawled in chalk. It moved down the board as other racers came in. It ended up in 6th place - the last postion to be able to go to “State”! Weird.
I am not a person to remember dreams. When I wake in the morning I might have a vague sense of having drempt about a city for instance. But I can recall no detail. I do dream at times with just a sound track with no visual component, and as I wake up I can take control and guide the conversation. I have no idea to whom I am speaking but there is definitely someone else taking part.
Three or four times in my life I have had very clear dreams complete with vivid color, sound, and an emotion charged single incident. In all cases the dreams have proven to be accurately prophetic, right down to who was present and what they were wearing, what was said, and one pivotal moment of high emotion.
I did some searching and found that nearly everyone experiences déjà vu, where an individual feels as though an event has already happened or has happened in the near past. The experience of déjà vu may be described as "remembering the future".
I think modern physics has arrived at the conclusion that there is no such thing as "absolute time" and that time is relative to the observer and the observed. That is to say that an event may be simultaneously in someones future and also in someone elses past. The "arrow" of time that points from "then" through "now" toward "coming soon" more or less points in the direction of increasing entropy. I say more or less as it is entirely possible to decrease entropy. A device for so doing being the humble air conditioner. Granted the decrease is limited in scope and scale and the decrease is balanced by an increase elsewhere but it serves to illustrate that the direction of time is malleable.
Having said that I offer for your consideration:
http://www.redorbit.com/news/display/?id=126649
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-452833/Is-REALLY-proof-man-future.html
Regards,
GtG
PS The truly prophetic dreams seem to be extraordinarily vivid and detailed and seem to depict an instance of high emotional content.
That may be perhaps the finest reply I've ever seen posted on this forum. I congratulate you.
L
I was lucky enough to see the Police reunion tour in ‘07 I think it was. Great show.... absolutely fantastic.
If you put on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon and synch it up with the movie Wizard of Oz, you will be amazed how it works.
More New wave than punk. Dead kennedys, social distortion, CRASS. true sounds of liberty. Punk
I tried this once and was unimpressed. What is the sync point? In any case Dark Side of the Moon stands alone as a very good album, but nothing Floyd ever did - and I have heard even the bizarre Syd crap - came remotely close to The Wall. So sad that the latter, such a phenomenal oeuvre, musically, has as its main theme, self-centeredness and moral relatavism. I adored The Wall and still do, but always wondered why the boy couldn’t simply honor his father’s memory, honor his own life, and take things with a bit of perspective. Then again, maybe that’s precisely what The Wall accomplishes. Who knows.
Tell you the truth, I don't know. I read it on the internet one time. lol
The Wall is fantastic as a complete work. My favorite record from them was Animals. One of their most underrated as well.
I don’t really understand what the question is.
“Sting is a whiny leftist poseur.”
Who of these non-country popular acts are NOT?
LOL
That one was OK. Personally I like “Bring on the Night.”
Animals is my fave too. I think it has the best Gilmour guitar work of any Floyd album.
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