I must be getting old:  Ray Manzarek (from The Doors) died today.  He was seventy-four.  He lived a lot longer than his mate Jim Morrison.  Far too many musicians died early.  Too much fame too early.  Ray, at least, made it to a ripe old age.  Each year someone else dies who I followed in the sixties and seventies.  Of old age.  I feel old, today, although I won’t stay there.  From dust we come and to dust we shall return.  Death and taxes.  We all face that one day.

‘Songs To Aging Children Come’  This is the title and a line from an early Joni Mitchell song I heard in the late sixties.  In the song she says in beautiful language and this is a paraphrase:  there is all this beauty around and don’t you see it.  I do.  And she ends the song saying:  ‘songs to aging children come.  This is one’.  Back then and now I identified with the song.  Another line was ‘people hurry by so quickly, don’t they hear the melodies…’

I saw all this beauty around me as a young adult and others were not seeing it.  I could not understand that.  Even today.  I starting writing back then to the present to record this marvelous world before me and slow down my pace so I could capture this beauty.  Then she ends the song:  ‘Songs to aging children come.  This is one.’  I had to grow up and still be child-like so I understood her song perfectly.  I was not all alone.

All of a sudden I felt old.  I was at an open mike of a coffeehouse.  A performer did a song of Bob Dylan’s.  I no longer remember the title but someone went up to the performer and told him it was great you were doing Dylan’s material and his material was not forgotten.  Suddenly I realized the song he did was fifty years old.  Dylan wrote one great song after another during that period.  The songs were a rallying point for the sixties civil (???) movement.  Maybe they will be discovered anew if the climate of our nation changes.  Those sixties songs captured a generation. And are there for subsequent generations to discover.

I have thousands of LP’s, CD’s and cassettes but always return to this one.  My nerves are ragged and when this happens I “pull out” this 60’s album “Clouds” by Joni Mitchell.  I did put it on cassette years ago.

The music is soothing and I will play it over and over and also search for other quiet music until this phase of mine passes.  I can’t listen to uptempo music right now.  I don’t think my episode will last too long.  I am still sleeping whole nights so I am not overly concerned.  I will play it by ear.  The more I can soothe my nerves the quicker I will return to normal.