Fly Like an Eagle

Without meaning to, my friend Kevin Eames – sadly now the late Kevin Eames – nearly ruined a couple of good songs for me.

I remembered one of them recently, when J. and I were on our way home from somewhere, listening to a playlist of a bunch of old rock songs on shuffle, and the song randomly picked by MediaMonkey (one of the apps I use) was "Fly Like an Eagle" by the Steve Miller Band. It was the first time I'd heard it in a long time. I'd forgotten how hokey and pseudo-profound – but also embarrassingly sincere and actually kind of meaningful – it is, including as it does the following lines:

Feed the babies
Who don't have enough to eat
Shoe the children
With no shoes on their feet
House the people
Livin' in the street
Oh, oh, there's a solution

I can't hear this song without thinking about something Kevin said to me at least twenty-five years ago. He told me once that when he was a kid and heard this song, he thought "house the people" was an inquiry into the well-being of "the people" – not "house the people," but "how's the people?", as in (as Kevin said at the time, in a faux-Jersey accent) "How's them people? How they doin'?" (Neither of us said anything, in any accent whatsoever, about how the next line, "Livin' in the street," is a depressing reference to the homeless problem.)

I don't know if what he said was true or not; I don't know if Kevin ever actually misinterpreted the song in this way, or if he was just being silly. But I'll tell you this: Whenever I hear or think about "Fly Like an Eagle," which admittedly is not often, I can't help but hear "how's the people?" in the lyrics.

Kevin told me another time, even before he had nearly ruined "Fly Like an Eagle" for me, that when he was teaching history at a small private Christian school, the school had a Christmas store they called Santa's Secret Workshop, and that one day he heard one of his students sing "Santa's Secret Workshop" to the tune of that great guitar riff that starts off Jethro Tull's "Aqualung" – and that he surprised the student by saying, "Hey, that's Jethro Tull, isn't it?"

And now, whenever I hear Aqualung – again, admittedly not often – I hear a deep voice intoning "Santa's Secret Workshop" in the same melody as Martin Barre's repeated six-note guitar riff at the opening of the song. (And yes, in case you're counting it out on your fingers as I did, "Santa's secret workshop" and "Sitting on a park bench" – the opening line of the song, sung by Ian Anderson to the same melody – do have the same number of syllables.)

I'm sure Kevin's children know that he could be really funny – Kevin told me once that Hilary told him he was "sillier than the other dads," which I have no trouble believing he was. But do they also know, I wonder, that Kevin had friends who prized his sense of humor, were perhaps even changed by it, and who really, really miss it?

I miss Kevin. I'd give anything to hear one of his corny stories again.

"Try to Keep the Ball Low..."

There is quite a bit of wisdom to be gleaned from this exchange between Charlie Brown and Lucy (from March 19, 1969), but I don't think the real takeaway here is "try to keep the ball low." (I think it's something about how often the better choice is to just shrug and say, "It's a mystery to me, too," because, really, the Lucy Van Pelts of the world don't want to hear your answers.)

My Phone Wants to go to the Zoo!

My phone wants me to take it someplace fun again.

I used to joke to Anna, back in the pre-pandemic days, that my phone wants to go somewhere interesting--Rock City, Book Nook, the zoo.

See, when I drive (with my phone securely in a phone holder attached to the dashboard, of course) I use Android Auto, which, among other things, displays Navigate guesses/suggestions for places it thinks you might be going, based, I suppose, on where you are, where you often go, your recent Google Maps activity, and (I'm going to say but don't actually believe) where it wants to go. (If you tap on one of these guesses/suggestions, Android Auto gives you step-by-step directions to that place...but you probably figured that out already, didn't you?)

It used to regularly include in its Navigate guesses/suggestions some of the cool places I have saved in my Google Maps profile--bookstores, parks, various kinds of attractions; it was like my phone was saying, "Hey, I know...let's go to Rock City! Wouldn't that be fun?" (Even when I was only going the three miles to the grocery store it would make these suggestions. It was kind of sad, really.)

But a while back it stopped. My phone, apparently, was resigned to sheltering-in-place/quarantining/staying close to home for a while. For a long time, its Navigate guesses/suggestions included only the mundane places I routinely go: Work, Kroger, Home.

But now my phone apparently wants to go out to fun places again. Several times in the last month it has included Zoo Atlanta in its list of Navigate guesses/suggestions.

It's a good idea. Maybe I'll take it there soon.

Anxiety Dreams

In Cynthia Rylant's wonderful picture book Motor Mouse--illustrated by Arthur Howard, whose work on Rylant's Mister Putter and Tabby series I love--Motor Mouse has a pocket watch that tells, not only the time and if it's sunny or rainy, but also whether you are dreaming or you are experiencing something that is really happening.

I need such a watch.

Last night I had an anxiety dream, one of those ultra-realistic ones that you think is reality, about my old job in the corporate world. In this dream I had a Big and Important project due very soon, but not only had I not started the project, I felt totally unqualified to do it at all--and powerless (in that dream-like way of being literally unable to do something) to tell my bosses--who were busy telling me how important the project was, and how they just knew that I would do a great job--that I couldn't do it and hadn't even started. It would have been a great comfort to me to have been able to whip out my pocket watch and see the little hand pointing to "dreaming," instead of thinking it was really happening and waking up at 5:15 a.m. in a panic.

(And if you're thinking, "But in the dream, the watch would have said 'really happening'"--No, if the watch really worked, it would have to say "dreaming" if I was dreaming. The watch is greater than any anxiety dream.) (Except that, yes, the watch is not real and anxiety dreams are. Dangit!)