I have been writing so much for the next novel and in emails that I have neglected my blog for almost a month.
After not using my Facebook account in the past couple of months I decided to deactivate it until I need it again. It will remain in that state until my next novel comes out some time this fall. Work on the novel set in the 1990s continues and progress has been excellent especially without the distraction of Facebook.
The 90s are a complicated time to write about because there were so many highs and lows I experienced like many twenty-somethings do. It can be the make or break period for dreams and so much change occurs in a person's life in those years. You hope to come out of it by the time you reach thirty having found yourself and figured out your way through life. The consequences of actions and responsibilities only grow with age and the sooner you accept that the better off you will be.
The other day I was flipping through records in an antique store in Roswell, Georgia when I came across an album by the group Bread. They were a band in the 1970s that to my ears are the sound of that decade. They were a hugely successful group with multiple hits on the Billboard charts and today you never hear them on the radio. Most people under the age of forty likely never have heard of them, unless maybe one of their songs has appeared in some comic book action movie in an ironic fashion. Everything from the past is either to be ridiculed or smeared today. Oh how we have forgotten about hindsight and perspective it seems.
Life has taught me many lessons and one is that it always changes. Some aspects of the past were worse and some were better. If you live long enough you will understand that.
I was going to snatch up that Bread album, it was priced at three dollars, until I removed it from the sleeve. It was scratched on both sides and that was disappointing. YouTube will have to continue to supply me my fix of Bread.
In the first half of the 90s I spent much of that time alone and that is not necessarily a complaint. I remember sitting alone in that big empty house on the hill with the windows open on a rainy spring night. My father was out after he and I had spent the day cleaning house from top to bottom. There were a number of stereos in the house and we had some that played eight tracks. We had a fair amount of eight tracks to go with our massive record collection. I inserted one by Bread. It was intensely peaceful to sit there alone for hours with the lights off, the sound of the steady falling rain and Bread.
I thought about the seventies and how I missed being a young boy. I am not a sentimental person or prone to nostalgic fits, but that one night I did miss that time – the golden period from my perspective. Music made me remember a family, a friend and feelings.
It is funny to me that in 2022 I had to listen to music from the 1970s to remember a night in the 90s. Pesky time warps via the ears!
If you read one or both of my earlier books you may believe you know my family, but there is more.
Thank you for reading.
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