I’ll start by saying, Happy Cinco de Mayo!

I forgot yesterday was Star Wars day, and I don’t want to miss two such things in a row.

I guess, given that it’s Friday, it might be a nice night to have a margarita, or some other tequila-based beverage, if you indulge in alcohol.  But don’t drink and drive, of course.  That’s just playing Russian Roulette with the gun pointed at other people as well as yourself and your loved ones.  If you do drink and drive, certainly if you do it very often, it might be ethical (but not legal, and for good reasons) for someone else to kill you in self-defense, or in the general defense of innocents.  I don’t recommend it, but it would be understandable.

I’m not writing this at the train station today, nor am I writing on the laptop computer.  I am writing this‒to start, anyway‒on my phone, from the house, because I’m taking the bus to the train today.

Yesterday, after only 2 days of riding the bike to and from the train station (one and a half, really), my back and legs and entire left side up to my shoulder were in severe pain all throughout the day, which didn’t help my baseline grumpiness at work.  Well, it helped the grumpiness, I guess you could say; at least, it enhanced or increased it.  But I felt like crap overall.

So, given that, I’m not going to ride my bike today, and I don’t think I’ll ride it tomorrow, which means I doubt that I’ll be going to the movies, since the distance to the nearest theater is longer than the distance to the train station, albeit not by much.  But if the latter causes me so much pain, I’d rather avoid the former.

I don’t think I want to walk to the theater, either.  I haven’t been walking long distances for several weeks, what with weather and trying to use the bike and so on, so I worry that I might exacerbate things, like blisters and joint pain and so on.  Anyway, an eight mile walk is likely to take more than two hours each way.  That’s chewing up a big chunk of a day to see a movie by myself.  Not that I tend to do anything more useful or entertaining otherwise.

I suppose I could activate either the Uber or Lyft app, both of which I downloaded the other day after the bus was 35 minutes late.  But I’ve never used either one before, and I’m leery of getting in a car with a stranger who doesn’t have an official “chauffeur’s” license and a local (also licensed and regulated) company behind them.  That may be silly of me, but it is what it is.  Maybe I’ll work out the public transportation route to the best movie theater.

Or maybe I should just nix the idea of going to the theater at all and just watch the movie on Disney+ when it gets there, assuming I am still alive by then.  As far as I know, it’s hard to watch movies when one is not alive, but there are counterbalancing compensations, the most prominent one being the lack of pain and another being a lack of sadness/loneliness/depression.  These things are not to be taken lightly.  Escaping from them can be strongly appealing, especially when there are few counterbalancing consolations.

Speaking of not being alive, it was quite sad (though not tragic, since he was 84) when, earlier this week, Gordon Lightfoot died.  I may have mentioned this here before, but his song, If You Could Read My Mind is among my favorites; it came out when I was young, and I’ve always thought it was beautiful.

In fact, I did a rhythm guitar “cover” of it, with me singing.  I’ll embed the video for that here, just in case you’re interested, and then‒to get the taste of my playing and singing out of your mouth‒I’ll embed a video of the real, original song by the man himself.

I only ask, out of kindness, for you not to listen to my version too soon after his, if you do it in that order.  You wouldn’t have Phoebe Buffay try to follow Yo Yo Ma on stage at Carnegie Hall, right?

So, here’s my version:

And here’s the way it’s supposed to sound:

He did a lot of other good stuff, too, of course.  No less an artist than Bob Dylan said that, whenever he heard a Gordon Lightfoot song, he wished it would go on forever.  I wouldn’t go quite that all-out, myself; I don’t think there are even any Radiohead, Pink Floyd*, or Beatles songs I wish would go on forever.

Now, Rachmaninoff’s 2nd piano concerto…that could be the background music for the world and I wouldn’t quickly get tired of it.  Or Dvorak’s “New World” symphony would be good, too.

And of course, on the flip side, my own songs, like Breaking Me Down and Like and Share at about six minutes, go on longer than anyone probably wants them to go.  I guess my song writing is a bit like my novel writing‒once I get going, I tend to go on and on, because momentum, or inertia, or whatever, makes it so that I have little capacity or urge to stop.

Ironically, though, I don’t really have much more to say right now.  My leg and back and side and hip hurt a bit less than yesterday, but they do hurt quite a bit, still, and I need to leave soon to go to the bus stop, because I don’t think I’ll be walking as fast as usual.

It’s been a relatively bland blog post, but there are various songs to which I will have linked, to which you can listen if you like.  Most of them are by real, excellent, professional musicians, and have stood the test of decades or longer.  Those ones, at least, are worth a listen.

I won’t be doing a post tomorrow, because I don’t work tomorrow, and hopefully I’ll have rested enough that my pain goes back to baseline.  Have a good weekend if you’re at all able.  And if you see the new Marvel movie, feel free to let me know what you think of it.

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*Though Echoes, which is the entire B-side of their album Meddle, goes on for a long time, and it’s not unpleasant.  And then there’s Shine On You Crazy Diamond, the opening and closing parts of the album Wish You Were Here.