Time-hole!

I have fallen into a "time-hole.  I am living in another time and place.  I'm reading a book by Simon Reynolds called "Retromania" which details Pop Culture's obsession with the past.  It's a good book, although for first 40 pages or so I was not tracking with it.  And I have found that it does put me in a bleary-eyed trance and helps me drift off to sleep.  Still I have stuck with the book and found some interesting and thought-provoking insights into our Pop Culture and the constant recycling of the past in our clothes, our music and our ideas.

At the same time, I've been stuck on listening to Pink Floyd's Meddle over and over.  It came out in 1971.  Wow talk about a time-hole.  I've fallen in and can't get out.  But you know, I think this is just such a great album.  Never really listened to it in it's entirety until all these many years later.  The band is in fine form, and the record is loose, jaunty, and funny; words not usually associated with Pink Floyd.  There is a genial lightness about the whole record that just sits well.  I think the spirit of Syd Barret hovers over the disc; in a good way.  It lacks any over-arching theme, and it also lacks some of the oppressiveness of the later Roger Water's dominated masterpieces.

Plus I'm a big fan of David Gilmour's guitar playing.  Just so beautiful and soulful too.  There's a track called "Seamus" which is a nice duet with a dog.  Really.  And that just hits home to me on so many levels, I can't even explain it.  Anyway, it is my soundtrack for "the now."  The book, the record go so well together in my head.  The record exemplifies the main theme of the book.  The record is a kind of spacey, long-hair trip.  Totally cool by me.

Yes, my head is in the past.  But my body is here.  And my now is still very now.  Even if it's suffused with sounds from the past.  But those sounds envelop me now.  And they don't sound "past" at all.  They sound very now to me, and seem to unaccountably point me to a brave new future.  Weird.  But true.  Time-hole!