Redtree Times

Private Space— At the West End Gallery

I said, unthinkingly: “I should like to go back.”

It was a true statement. But then it came to me that I could not go back. One cannot, ever, go back to the place which exists in memory. You would not see it with the same eyes — even supposing that it should improbably have remained much the same. What you have had you have had. ‘The happy highways where I went/ And shall not come again . . .’

Never go back to a place where you have been happy. Until you do it remains alive for you. If you go back it will be destroyed.

― Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

-5° this morning when I headed over to the studio. Walking over the wooden walkway and the small bridges that span the runoff creeks in the woods make them pop and crack in the icy stillness. Two of the feral cats, the males Buttercup and Gary, wait for me and walk in front of me, halting every few feet so that I am forced to stop and give them a pet.

I call these two the Snow Leopards. They seem impervious to the cold, sometimes rolling and playing in the snow with a weird kind of glee. Even so, I have a heater set up in the garage for them so they can escape the cold and a heated water bowl so they can drink easily. Occasionally, they stay in the warmer garage for a long spell but more often than not, even in this cold, they want to be out and about.

Coming into the studio this morning, I began looking for a song to play for this week’s Sunday Morning Music. I went through a bunch of videos and ended up watching some live Bruce Springsteen performances from the late 1970’s. I watched several songs from his legendary performance at the No Nukes Concert at Madison Square Garden from 1979.

It was like seeing a wild colt suddenly feeling the power of its legs and then racing about with frantic, unleashed, joyfully giddy energy.

I remember those days, both in his performances and in my own life.

Those days now seem like ancient history.

Would I go back? I don’t know. I doubt it. While there were those moments of this giddy, unfettered joy and energy, it was not a perfect world in any way.

And while the world now is in turmoil and a constant source of anxiety, I certainly wasn’t any more happy or content with my lot in life back then.

Actually, much less.

But we always seem to want to return to some idealized past, one where we edit out the bad memories of unhappiness, darkness, and sorrow.

But the past can’t be resurrected. Things and circumstances change. We change. 

So I watch these performances from Bruce and get emotional at the memory of the joy of that moment, knowing that it was a moment then that can’t be replicated now. Having that moment must be enough for me.

And it is.

That brings us to this week’s song and no, it’s not one of the No Nukes performances. But it is a Springsteen song. It’s Waitin’ On a Sunny Day which has much to do with what I just wrote. The song is from his album The Rising which came out in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The song expresses the desire of a person wanting to go back to an earlier and supposedly simpler time, before the attacks and the accompanying losses.

But as we all know, you can’t go back.

I like this particular rendition of the song. It is performed by 200 local musicians assembled in the fields of Belgium as both an homage to Springsteen and an invitation for him to come play a concert in those field of Belgium. It was filmed in the late summer of this past year. Given what has taken place in recent years, who can blame them for wanting to play a song that expresses the desire to go back in time somehow.

It is joyful and optimistic. Nothing wrong with that…