Thursday, June 21, 2007

Friday On My Mind

As I mentioned in my previous post, June 22, 2007 marks the 2nd anniversary of this humble blog spot formerly known as FRANKtalk.

I'd like to thank every one of you who visits this site for taking the time to indulge our muse. Your interest in the ethereal emanations extending from my little corner of the vast universe is appreciated.

My thanks again also to those bloggers [identified in my last post] who have honored this effort by linking this page at their own sites.

You will find those writers along with several other interesting and important site links in my own sidebar scroll so check them out soon.

We changed our name to In Touch With The Mystery a while back in order to reflect an abiding sense of the spiritually enhanced creative impulse glimpsed darkly through art, music, literature, philosophy and theology. Such spiritual intimations and soulful illuminations are truly wonderful gifts for which we ought to be eternally grateful.

Our perspectives can easily encompass a wide spectrum of revelation occurring always and everywhere within our ephemeral domains. Our highest purpose in fact is to develop and nurture our uniquely human transcendental faculties to the greatest degree we can in our lives.

God and angels then meet us at that tremulous precipice to steady our tether and encourage us on our way back to the lost horizon.

The devil takes the hindmost. Ours is the duty to embrace Truth.

My purpose in creating a blog initially focused primarily on issues pertaining to professional songwriting and the music publishing business along with observations and casual commentary related to conservative philosophy. Also, it was my desire to relate a wealth of personal and music business related stories gained from a life of rich experiences lived both inside & outside the proverbial Gates of Eden.

That's a book in itself however so I may in fact be inspired at some point to compile those stories into a volume for future publishing.

Meantime, my lifelong passion for great songwriting, along with my passionate interests in artful, intelligent pop craft and the important core socio/cultural and political issues that have motivated me as a creative artist & writer for many long years, remain strongly in focus.

I love to write and of course, the mystery is always unfolding. I love the rich textures of our life. Always changing yet strangely familiar.

Also, I can't help myself from posting great pop/rock music video clips from time to time. Ok maybe a lot of the time. But my love of classic pop/rock performances as found on YouTube is irrepressible. The Easybeats performing Friday On My Mind is a recent example. I mean, just listen to that song...along with being the #1 pop hit song of all time from Australia, it also just happens to be one of the most memorable and defining records of my own earliest influences. This 1966 hit, among others, was absolutely pivotal in providing me with so much of my early formative development as a singer/songwriter.

Check it out in my May 20th post …[Walking On The Moon] …and incidentally, if these hooks don't kill then you may be already dead. Paul McCartney [Beatle Paul for you youngsters out there] was so rocked by this smash hit record the first time he heard it in his car, he immediately called the record label just to find out who it was.

While you're at it, check out Buffalo Springfield doing Mr. Soul with Neil Young at the helm [video clip directly below The Easybeats]

Again, if these songs and performances don't slay you, you may no longer have a heart full of soul and might require spiritual surgery.

The Moody Blues provide the details on that journey in The Voice [See clip immediately following Neil Young with Buffalo Springfield]

Still, time marches on. Everything changes. Nothing remains the same. Eventually all our precious treasures get lost in the rubble.

Minds can easily adapt however as our souls also must continue to expand by embracing the infinite reality of eternity now through the brilliant heritage of artistic expression and spiritual enlightenment in all creative human endeavors that reveal what we need to truly live.

It’s an epochal, transformative technological era in which we now exist surrounded by an endless sea of shallow distractions and toxic superficial amazements. But, even as we die laughing, evil is burning our putrefying slow rotting corpses into the Lost Souls of Asmodeus.

Not to worry though...everything’s gonna be fine…you’ll see...if you're lonely you can talk to me...but not now...and never here.

As Silvio Dante says..."our true enemy has yet to reveal himself"

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Thursday Morning, 5 O’Clock Rain

Boredom's a pastime that one soon acquired
Where you get to the stage that you're not even tired
Kickin' your heels 'til the time comes around
To pick up your bags and head out of town
- Elton John/Bernie Taupin

It came to me as I patiently sat waiting for my departure schedule to finally catch up with my soul in the early morning hours of a fresh new spring day in 1972. My train would be pulling out at 9 so I'd have to be in the taxi and gone by 7am. What the hell…may as well play.

I checked my time...5am...getting lighter now...soft rain...more dew and mist than downfall really but adequate enough to the senses that it inspired elements in my mind to open a new song that wrote itself.

It was a Thursday morning. God knows where I was going. It was a long time ago now. But I got there. And God knows that story too. I've been lots of places since. Everywhere I've ever had the burning desire to explore in fact. But this scene was 35 years ago. Eternity.

I've been around you know. Oh yeah. I've heard the silence howling and I've caught angels as they've fallen in the shuffling madness of the locomotive breath for what seemed like forever at this junction, but the train you know it won't stop going. No way to slow down.

But back then, everything was fresh and every place I traveled to was yet another exciting new world of possibility and hopefulness.

Time in the trenches through each phase of my wandering journey would eventually prove the naiveté of an all too innocent visionary quest, but nothing is ever really lost to hearts that are faithful and true. Borders, bandits and broad loomed bordellos can't completely extinguish that deathless spirit. Your heart can easily remain open.

Some things can't be taught, they can only be lived.

So on that misty morning, that "rainy" Thursday morning at 5 am, a mere few hours before being long gone and glory bound for a destiny that I could never have imagined for me even in a moment's sunlight, I picked up my guitar & wrote "Thursday Morning, 5 O'Clock Rain".

Little did I know then, nor could I fully appreciate, the resonant hope that such a creative musing could produce in people's souls someday.

I was just killing time. But that same song would in fact become my very first recording as an artist and for some reason also become a touchstone favorite with so many people who knew me and who still remember me and the song from it's success in 1975 when it was first popular on the radio. The interesting thing to me - since there's been a bit of a resurgent interest in this record in my former home part of the country lately - is that this song apparently means just as much to people now as it did when they first connected with it as being meaningful in their own lives. Maybe more. I find this amazing.

Perhaps, because it's just a song of mine, I tend to be surprised by this reaction to a tune. But I'm no different in my own life when it comes to music and lyrics that speak to me. I'm just as passionate today as I've ever been in my life about all the great songs, artists and records that moved me. Maybe, like them, even more so today.

What's more amazing is that a few months before that record came out in 1975, I met the beautiful girl who would soon become my wife. Linda and I met June 14, 1975 and we've been together ever since. So June 14 is our "unofficial" anniversary. We were married in 1978. Our 30th official anniversary is next year. We've had a life let me tell you. And it ain't over yet. Better today than it's ever been.

We have our own timeless connection to a particular song that indeed I actually played and sang during Mass on our wedding day.

You might say it's our Tumbleweed Connection


You'll note the lyric at the top of this post is from Holiday Inn which is a great song from Madman Across the Water which, along with Tumbleweed Connection, represents the best of early Elton John.

So, I dedicate Tumbleweed Connection’s Love Song to Linda here today in honor of our 32 years as I did back then on our wedding day and as I rededicate myself to her again and for always and forever.

Linda is my life and my soul's true inspiration and she is also the talented creator and designer of my artist website and this blog.

I've prepared a post marking our blogs upcoming 2nd anniversary which will appear before June 22 but I want to thank Linda here very much now for all of the tremendous work and input she has provided in helping me to sustain both these online efforts in every respect.

We're a team and we work well together in love and life.

We are just beginning our journey through the higher dimensions.

It's been a very intense time the past six months or so here dealing with several important business issues and personal matters which have demanded my complete focus and closest attention so posting on a regular basis hasn't really been an option for me until recently.

We've kept things low key here lately putting up favorite music clips of ours from YouTube and the like, which is cool as I love that stuff, but we're hopefully back now to more varied purposes and musings as we approach our blog site’s 2nd anniversary which is on June 22nd.

Hope you drop by to read that special post as well...and by the way, thanks for stopping by and reading this story today…I appreciate it.

I'd also like to express my thanks and kind appreciations to those very special bloggers who have honored this mysterious blog universe of mine since our "big bang" two years ago, by choosing to add this blog to their own personal sidebar links. I am grateful to have our musings here appreciated by such outstanding writers as they are all very distinguished and unique in their own respective realms.

I like to believe that they're all In Touch With The Mystery.

In fact, I know they are.

RightWingBob.com
The Invisible Hand
small dead animals
Pro Ecclessia
Rerum Novarum
Western World Politics
Let Freedom Reign
Faith Mouse
The Great Pumpkin

Please note that we're still linked as FRANKtalk at some blogs until requests for a change to our new site name can be forwarded to all.

Hope you enjoy!
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