Caterwauling

If I were younger or dumber or looking to get fired, I would write about my day. But let’s assume that I’ve just spent the last 5,000 words describing every tool in the box, and we can all move on from here. 😉

I feel better already!

Actually, you know what’s been making me happy in my captivity these past few days? VH1’s 100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs of All Time countdown. Who knew that all the songs that defined my youth would appear in a five-hour retrospective special on the former Video Hits One, where adult contemporary once went to die?

I had to giggle when one of my F-book friends from high school became a fan of Poison. We were all such wannabe hoochies, dressing up like Madonna as we went to all the heavy metal concerts we could afford from our summer camp job money. She was going to marry C.C. Deville while I was lusting after a three-way with Jon Bon Jovi and Kip Winger.

My dreams haven’t changed all that much. 😉

I’d say “seriously, though,” as a transition to the next thought, but I ain’t kidding … not one bit!

Nothing makes me happier than either dancing around Metro stations with R&B on the iPhone (check the security cameras at Metro Center from last weekend. You’d be amused), or listening to all that “devil music.” At a time when I’m feeling particularly lost and devoid of the bulk of life’s pleasures, it’s weird how I rediscovered my soul while listening to Megadeth and Dio and Dokken and Ratt and Motley Crue and Alice Cooper and all the other music that is now too loud because I’m too old. 😉

I don’t have any deep epiphany beyond remembering when I was a wee lass, scribbling my early books in my spiral-bound notebooks for school, while listening to that music. Dreaming of those rock stars, of being the one they pulled up on stage for a song or two, of being a rock star someday myself and traveling the world and living the shit out of every day I was lucky enough to have been given.

I wrote my first book 20 years ago. It wasn’t any good and I’m sure I lost it about 85 moves ago (one hopes). But man, the dreams I had and the stories they inspired.

Wistful. I was so wistful. Now I’m nostalgic for that wistfulness. Funny, that. I always figured that, in 20 years (from then), I’d either still be partying like a rock star or I will have done all my partying and then I’d be settling down a little bit into a real life.

Not that I ever saw myself as a corporate type — I figured I’d be wearing flip-flops to work and being a cool mom who wasn’t embarrassing for the kids to be seen in public with.

And I do wear flip-flops to work — the better for sitting barefoot and Indian-style in my ergonomic chair — I just shove on “real” shoes for meetings lest anyone see my flagrant disregard for things like rules and decorum!!

I wonder if my Poison-loving friend would be shocked to know how many different kinds of music I follow these days. How I’d rush to the next Lillith Fair, were it ever reprised. How you might never catch me country line-dancing, but I know all the lyrics. How when you see me grooving and lip-syncing on the Orange Line, I’ve got some Montell Jordan/Next/Rico Love jam going on. And in the middle of it all, a little Christian/gospel for good measure?

Anyway, I totally get why older folk listen to the “golden oldies” station. It’s not really that they don’t like “that rock ‘n roll music” — it just didn’t define their dreams, their memories, their generation the way it did mine.

*making the ‘devil horns’ and headbanging, and then taking an Excedrin ’cause OW!*

This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 9:58 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.