To be a rock and not to roll.
At some point in the last 5-or-so years, I completely forgot about a third of the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven. This is not at all like my relationship with Let All Mortal Flesh, which I am incapable of memorizing the second two verses of. (Probably because my favourite version of it overwhelms them with descant.) It's not like there aren't things written less on my heart which I listen to less and remember more. I could rattle off lyrics to several Black Sabbath songs with a greater probability of continued success.
It probably wasn't when I subscribed to Anglican Theological Review. Or even when I bought a Saab. These are reasonable things for a lover of Led Zeppelin (not that it's clear to me that I ever really was one; many of their albums fail to interest me at all) to do when approaching mid-age. Maybe it was when I decided that I'd avoid recreational drugs until I was sure whether or not I would pursue a security clearance. Or when I figured out that being poly wasn't really for me. Maybe it was the first time I watched Extreme Couponing - that seems incompatible with remembering the lyrics to Stairway; empty, lifeless, devoid of meaning.
Maybe it was when I decided that I didn't really care about learning any more European languages. There's certainly something deeply-European about it, right? Even as it strains the boundaries of that category, of course. No, maybe not that.
Perhaps the words fled from my mind when I went a year (and counting, I might add) without fixing a string on my best guitar. I don't think it hurts my case at all that I consider a twelve-string acoustic my best guitar, and not my American Strat. Hell, if it's about betrayal of the guitar, then maybe I forgot the lyrics longer ago than I think. Did they leave my memory when I found myself agreeing with a coworker who said he didn't listen to any music with guitars in? Or when I took up my similar (but orthogonal) cause, listening to music only from between 1987 and 1994?
It's gone now, and though it would stick for a few days if I listened to it just one time, and while it still draws as much delight from me as ever (and I certainly was among those crying when Heart performed it at the Kennedy Center), I will probably never again listen to it enough to fully-remember them for a long period of time. It feels like it is in some way now more in my past than it ever was, and it predated me by some good number of years. Surely I have not outgrown it, and yet I no longer need it. Perhaps then, it is those things like Let All Mortal Flesh, which I forever can't quite memorize, which catapult me to a similar place, but one more deeply-rooted, and one which I inhabit so much more. There is so much more of a feeling I get when I look to the East, than ever there was to the West.
It probably wasn't when I subscribed to Anglican Theological Review. Or even when I bought a Saab. These are reasonable things for a lover of Led Zeppelin (not that it's clear to me that I ever really was one; many of their albums fail to interest me at all) to do when approaching mid-age. Maybe it was when I decided that I'd avoid recreational drugs until I was sure whether or not I would pursue a security clearance. Or when I figured out that being poly wasn't really for me. Maybe it was the first time I watched Extreme Couponing - that seems incompatible with remembering the lyrics to Stairway; empty, lifeless, devoid of meaning.
Maybe it was when I decided that I didn't really care about learning any more European languages. There's certainly something deeply-European about it, right? Even as it strains the boundaries of that category, of course. No, maybe not that.
Perhaps the words fled from my mind when I went a year (and counting, I might add) without fixing a string on my best guitar. I don't think it hurts my case at all that I consider a twelve-string acoustic my best guitar, and not my American Strat. Hell, if it's about betrayal of the guitar, then maybe I forgot the lyrics longer ago than I think. Did they leave my memory when I found myself agreeing with a coworker who said he didn't listen to any music with guitars in? Or when I took up my similar (but orthogonal) cause, listening to music only from between 1987 and 1994?
It's gone now, and though it would stick for a few days if I listened to it just one time, and while it still draws as much delight from me as ever (and I certainly was among those crying when Heart performed it at the Kennedy Center), I will probably never again listen to it enough to fully-remember them for a long period of time. It feels like it is in some way now more in my past than it ever was, and it predated me by some good number of years. Surely I have not outgrown it, and yet I no longer need it. Perhaps then, it is those things like Let All Mortal Flesh, which I forever can't quite memorize, which catapult me to a similar place, but one more deeply-rooted, and one which I inhabit so much more. There is so much more of a feeling I get when I look to the East, than ever there was to the West.