You Say It's Your Birthday

Today is John Lennon's birthday.

He would have been 71.

Spoken in Dreams

We communicate now through dreams.

It's not an efficient way to talk.

You dream of something. If I'm asleep, I'll sense it.

Later, I dream of something. If you're asleep and you're aware, you know it.

It's inefficient because you haven't been aware for a long time.

But something's changed.

Maybe it's the cool winds signaling a gradual descent into winter.

Maybe it's something else.



The dreams were important once.

From a time when we were younger. And the world felt new.

And then the dreams vanished.

Or we ignored them.

Minds and hearts closed.

But lately... lately.

Something has changed. There's an abyss. And a bridge.



Ironically, I can't remember any of the dreams.

But I remember having them.

Hearts opening. Eyes opening. Mind opening.

And the contentment is inspirational.

But not without risk.

I'd expect nothing more... from a dream.

I Tried to Make it Sunday

We're Still in Wisconsin as far as I know...

25 years after their heyday was over (and 30 years after their third member left for a career making explicitly Christian music), America found an unlikely ally in Adam Schlessinger from Fountains of Wayne.

Schlessinger recorded some demos with Gerry Beckley and Sony signed America. Schlessinger and James Iha (from Smashing Pumpkins) produced America's underrated (and underheard) 2007 album Here and Now. To assure the interest of old-time America fans, the album came with a bonus live record consisting of live versions of every song from 1975's History: America's Greatest Hits.

So it seems oddly appropriate to hear America covering "A Road Song" (from the new Fountains of Wayne album) -- with a side-dish of "Sister Goldenhair":

Looking 4 Luv

Julian Lennon is now 8 years older than his dad was when he died.

So... there's that.

And here's this:

The Broken-Hearted Toy You Play With

I tried and I tried...

I wanted to know why she called.

I wanted to ask if she was worried that there might have been a tiny part of my heart she hadn't smashed into tiny bits.

But I didn't say those things.

I didn't say how hurt I was by the way she acted.

She said she thought she saw me.

She hadn't. I was nowhere near there.

In fact, I won't go back there. That place is haunted -- by memories of her.

So, no, I wasn't there. I was hundreds of miles away.

Doing something else. (And if I thought of her that night, well, I wasn't going to admit it. Not then and not now.)

The next night I dreamed about her. And the dream was so vivid, so real, that I knew some of the details about her in the dream were true.

And I wish that I'd never had the dream. Maybe then she wouldn't have called.

And then I wouldn't feel like my heart was being broken into tiny pieces all over again.


And how the hell did she know?

How did she always seem to know?

And why can't I ever seem to get back there?

God, It's Such A Drag When You're Living in the Past

Maybe You Can Find Anything on the Interwebz

From 1987 (and arguably better than anything he released in the late 80s) comes an unreleased gem from Sir Paul McCartney:



I wonder what made him shelve this? Fear that he'd be seen as dwelling on the past (or condemning the past)? A gut feeling that the lyrics weren't up to snuff? A deep-seated fear that the Blue Meanies know where he lives?

Sometimes I Get This Crazy Dream

And the fog's in barrels on Totten Pond Road...

The new Fountains of Wayne album Sky Full of Holes is fantastic.

And there, buried in the second-to-last song (where it slid by unnoticed during my first few listens), is a reference to Totten Pond Road in Waltham, Mass.

The exact place where, more years ago than I care to admit, just off the highway and a short walk from the reservoir, I had my first job out of college.



The company's gone now -- after betting too much on government contracts that fundamentally made no sense, they pivoted ten years ago and tried to make consumer products. This required getting rid of almost all the people who worked on the government jobs -- because people will never tolerate in a consumer product the nonsense the government puts up with.

I don't remember what I worked on there and I only lasted a year before I moved on -- to a company where I worked on something else I can't remember.

But at Totten Pond Road there was a guy I'll call David (which I think was even his name) -- he seemed impossibly old at the time, but probably was only in his 50s.

I can't remember the organizational structure, but David was in charge of a significant part of our project. He had several people working for him and had a wry sense of humor.

He kept to himself, but so did a lot of people there.

Then, one Monday, he was gone.

The direct-deposit of his paycheck hit Saturday at 12:01 am. He emptied his bank account, left his wife, kids, house, and credit cards and took his car.

His wife was panicked, the cops were called, and everyone was hauled into a conference room to answer questions about whether he said anything that indicated he might do something like this.

No one had heard anything and David had been careful not to leave any hints about what he clearly had planned for some time.

A few months later, he called one of his colleagues. He'd moved halfway across the country, taken another job, and decided he needed to start again.

But the weird thing was that he'd done this exact thing before.

David had cleaned out his bank account and left a house and first wife in California to come to Totten Pond Road.

We all sometimes get that crazy dream that we just take off in the car. David did it -- at least twice.

And this morning, with fog rolling in from the coast in Los Angeles, I wondered where David wound up -- and whether he vanished a third time. (I hope he's still around, even though he'd certainly be a lot older now...)

Or just thought about it, then turned his car around and went home.