Throw Your Arms Around Me

NOTE TO READERS: if I write something in italics and parenthesis... please imagine me looking around to make sure no one's paying attention to me before whispering the thing I'm saying in parenthesis as you read it.

Neil Finn then

Are you familiar with Neil Finn? Maybe you know of his name because he recently joined Fleetwood Mac. Maybe you're familiar with his solo career or one of his more well known bands, Crowded House or Split Enz.

In the early to mid 80's I had an awakening to music... I went from being a more or less vapid listener of whatever was the cool thing based on the folks with whom I surrounded myself to discovering a combination of sound and content. I needed something other than dance music. I needed something other than rhythm and melody. I needed poetry. I needed content. And I needed something that I could imagine myself singing in front of an audience as they admired me and my cool band. Oh don't pretend you didn't do the same thing with whatever your musical choice was.

If you follow my blog at all then you've already heard about this when I talked about "the The" and if you recall that was 1986. Two other bands I had discovered in 1986 was "Hunter's & Collectors" and "Crowded House". So while my peers were listening to Eddie Murphy... yes that Eddie Murphy, sing my girl wants to "Party All The Time" or Prince singing "Kiss" or maybe even Steve Winwood singing "Higher Love", I was listening to something else.

Neil Finn now

Not to single out these two bands that I had mentioned... there were some great tunes out there that crossed genres like "Sledge Hammer" by Peter Gabriel or "West End Girls" by Pet Shop Boys and a whole slew of others.

With myriad hits like "World Where You Live", "Don't Dream It's Over" and "Something So Strong"... Crowded House was an instant Success. It didn't hurt that they had the street cred of Neil Finn from the already successful Split Enz, New Zealand's most famous and successful band ever... well at least in 1986. But a lesser known member of the band was Nick Seymour. We'll come back to him in a little bit.

Hunters & Collectors

Hunters & Collectors, another band from down and under hit me from out of the blue with a song that punched me in the gut, made me want to sing and made me want to do that weird thing I called dancing and most people probably called "Bil having some kind of seizure again" and it made me feel a little... (dirty). The song... introduced to me as "The Slab" was originally titled "Betty's Worry" and had a specific lyric that if one thinks about it... tells you what the song is about.

(Here we go)
Oh yeah
Better get my head down there
Oh, where?
Down there in that cavern where heaven grows

Okay, I'm leaving that there for you all to figure out for yourselves. But man does that video reek of the type of male behavior that's been rampant in the news of late.

Back to Hunters & Collectors for a moment. The lead singer was Mark Seymour... older brother to Nick Seymour mentioned earlier as a member of Crowded House. Mark had this great song, originally released as a single and played a little harder and faster, it was re-released in 1986 on their "Human Frailty" album and then again in 1990 as a slightly better produced version. The song was called "Throw Your Arms Around Me" and while I imagine it was probably well known in Australia and possibly throughout the UK and Canada... it was a much lessor known song here in the States... that is until it was covered by Neil Finn.

Neil Finn essentially covers the mellower version and it's also been covered by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam as well as several others... usually from Australia or New Zealand where the song is more of a national classic despite never having been a hit by it's original performer.

These days I hear it a lot while listening to 92.5 the river and its been on my mind that I'd like to get the Hunters & Collectors version out there again. I know that won't happen... but at least you now know it exists and if it's a song you dig.... maybe you'll go check out the original(s).

In Autumn

I meant to write this earlier this week... or even within the week prior. Specifically so I could post it no later than yesterday, October 8th 2018. This is not a day without significance, this is not a week without significance. This is not a month without significance.

I have a love hate relationship with fall and particularly the September October stretch. As autumn rolls in and the summer fades away I always feel a certain melancholy or the feeling of love lost, as if I had spent the spring falling in love, the summer adoring my love and early autumn finds my love's full potential as the foliage bursts into fiery reds, orange and yellows. But as the leaves fall away bare tree branches seem to be pointing to the oncoming cold and lonely winter sky. Hibernation is nigh. Time to gather... gather my thoughts, harvest my emotions, process them for the winter pondering while I await the spring and with it, my new love.

That's probably far more revealing than I should ever be... you're welcome.

Thirteen years ago, as Meg was spending countless winter and spring hours with her mom, who had a stroke just before Christmas, I was working on the bits and pieces of a dream. As Meg spent the spring-summer stretch losing her mom, we were in the throes of construction... in more ways than one. As autumn approached and Meg's body was building a baby we were assembling the final components of our small business and on October 8th of 2005 we opened a little tea house called Licorice & Sloe Company. One of the finest endeavors I would ever undertake. The baby was pretty cool too.

Ten years and a week ago we closed the doors to said small business. I could talk about all of the reasons why, but they don't matter anymore... only the memories matter, only the friendships I still maintain from that period of my life matter, only the people who found each other in that tea house and are still connected or eventually married matter. To this day I walk around town or at the grocery store and former customers, familiar but still virtual strangers, approach me to tell me they miss the tea house. Some times they just walk up to me and say... "hey, you're the tea guy." I think that's my personal favorite... it's not a bad thing to be known as the tea guy. The kids that used to work for me would call me Teadog. It became my trail name whenever I hiked. They're grown up and living lives across the united states but they still visit us when they get the chance and we consider ourselves lucky to know them, they are just wonderful people... all of them.

Just prior to ending the Licorice & Sloe Company Tea House, I began to get these severe headaches. I tried dealing with them on my own, but eventually saw a doctor. They never quite figured out what caused the headaches though I have my own theories, but during the doctor visit they discovered I had kidney disease (that's an oversimplification... but let's keep it simple today, ok?). Upon official diagnosis they told me I'd be fine, that they'd give me some blood pressure pills and that would prevent me from needing to even consider dialysis until I was in my late 60's or early 70's. Four years later I was on dialysis and another four plus years later, a year ago this month, I had a kidney transplant.

As this year anniversary approaches and I ponder my last 10-15 years, defined by myriad springs of falling in love, summers of loving, autumns of brilliant colors and winters that run the gamut from frigid cold and deep snow to unseasonably warm and all the ups and downs that filled those years... I feel a little lost for direction. There is this potential for a "reasonably normal life" post transplant, but a wall in front of me of my own making that I can't seem to climb. I want to go do... but do what? I want to not waste this time, but the time I spend not wanting to waste it is wasting that time. I don't know where to begin. I feel stuck in the muck and the mire of my own comfort. I'm incapable of breaking away from this stagnant place. I feel bound and cemented to the earth of my life... like a tree... whose leaves have flashed their brightest colors and are falling away... with winter at my door.

Maybe I'll find answers in the spring.