It took until I heard Joe Cocker's version of "With a Little Help From My Friends" (which was quite a while ago, naturally) for me to notice the awe with which I regard those people who arrange music, especially rock music (because that's what I listen to most and am most familiar with). Who thought to turn that song into a waltz? The Beatles must have been completely blown away when they first heard it. And from that thought came this awe, this recognition of how talented those people are, composers, musicians, engineers, producers, professional arrangers, back up singers, all those who decide the sound of a song. Who decided to bring in the drums just there just like that in "In the Air Tonight"? The sax in "Baker Street"? The cello in "Yesterday"? The extended organ at the end of "A Day in the Life"?
This observation is closely related to one which occurs to me from time to time: Everything man made has to have been imagined, invented, manufactured, made commercially available, and bought.
Everything. Someone had to think of cloth, someone had to figure out how to make it, someone had to decide how it would look. When I look in my closet, I see shapes and patterns and colors, and everything single item took who knows how many different minds, different tools, different set of hands to be brought into existence. The stove, the couch, the rug, the blanket, the backyard fence, the sidewalk, the car, the power lines. Everything, imagined, designed, and manufactured. For some reason, that absolutely blows my mind.
I sometime try to envision the natural planet underneath all the concrete humans have added on. I understand why humans desperately need to look at or be in nature when we can manage it. Man made things are hard. Convenient, certainly, but hard. We need the softness of nature so that we can relax our eyes now and then, relax our minds, be reminded that we truly belong to the natural world, no matter how unnatural we try to make it.
Sweet Hubby and I saw a rabbit in our backyard recently, a sweet little brown bunny with short pinky ears, probably the descendant of a pet. We stood and watched little Bun-Bun for as long as we could see her, and for those moments, we didn't think of the vileness of Trump and his enablers, didn't think about COVID, we weren't angry at anyone, weren't worried about anything, didn't feel the rush to the next thing. We were simply with each other and with the bunny and grass and the sky, and it was so good, so very good.
I think none of us is going to come out of this period of time as the people we were before. I think once Trump is out of office and a vaccine has been found for COVID and it's possible to open the doors of the world again, I think we are all going to be a little more tired, a little more angry, a little more scared than we were before. Maybe not. Maybe joy and gladness and gratitude will reign, and we will be filled with exuberance for having survived four years of - well, I don't want to go down that path right now. But it does feel to me as though we are all being traumatized, not the way one is by the jolt of an assault or a car accident or an earthquake, but slowly and constantly. I wonder how it will affect us all in the longer view. I wonder what the world will look like to children and teenagers who have done some of their growing up during this time. I wonder what my old age will be like.
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