Westword, Volume XXXI

“Now the first of December was covered with snow”
 
November, 1991. Sixteen years old. Junior year at Westwood High School, playing football (and that bench was not going to warm itself, mind you) for a team ranked #7 in the state. Driving, dancing, dating. Having fun while starting to think about some faraway thing called college.
 
The Berlin Wall had come down when we were freshmen, the Gulf War happened as sophomores, and now the USSR was dissolving before our eyes. We sometimes even paid attention to such worldly things. Sometimes.
 
MTV still played videos; cars and guitars and girls with curls and pearls. Music has changed markedly since I was in school – although I’m sure my parents were saying the same thing when my boom box boomed Bon Jovi and Van Halen.
 
“And so was the Turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston”
 
Music. Music was king and music is still king. Music will be my hobby when all my other hobbies have gone away.
 
One of the first songs I can remember was “Music Box Dancer” by Frank Mills – an early lesson that popular songs don’t always have words. The soundtrack from “Grease” and John Lennon’s “Woman” take me back to age five or so, when some called me Jamie, and others called me baby James.
 
When I was eight, I discovered Billy Joel. When I was ten, I discovered Bruce Springsteen. And when I was 13 – with a little help from my friends – I discovered Led Zeppelin, and THAT was certainly when my love affair with rock and roll was consummated.
 
So what does November have to do with any of this?
 
“Though the Berkshires seemed dream-like on account of that frosting”
 
Life is more complicated these days. There isn’t enough time to spend every afternoon and weekend with my friends, playing air guitar and drums with the volume turned up to eleven.
 
But there was time in 1991, and there was also “November Rain” by Guns n’ Roses. We were just cerebral enough to care about the lyrics, paying attention to songs that forewarned – loves would not last, high school would not last, youth would not last. We had little use for pop songs with a good beat but no emotional impact, appreciating the songs that somehow moved us.
 
I still do.
 
“Dreamline” was a single that year for the legendary Canadian band Rush. I was quite haunted by the chorus – “When we are young, wandering the face of the Earth, wondering what our dreams might be worth, learning that we’re only immortal…for a limited time.”
 
Neil Peart, the band’s drummer and lyricist, was still in his thirties when he wrote that. What a message for a cocky teenager like me – it hit home. I would later see Rush in concert five times. The first was in college, with those high school friends. The last was in 2015 with my buddy Mark, a BFF among my Westwood dad friends. Five years later, Neil Peart died at the age of 67.
 
“With ten miles behind me, and ten thousand more to go”
 
Fall turned to winter turned to spring. My seventeenth birthday loomed, and so did John (Cougar) Mellencamp’s lyric “hold on to sixteen as long as you can, changes come ‘round real soon, make us women and men.” I was lucky. Thanks to leap year, I got to hold on to sixteen for 366 whole days, perhaps one more than Jack and Diane got.
 
About 12,000 days ago, was that extra day.
 
And so it goes each year. The same songs come back to me in November, despite the work, the kids, the house, the holiday prep, the list that never ends. My cassettes and CD’s have been replaced by apps, and I can summon any song by asking Siri to play it. I walk down memory lane. Down to the river. Meet the new soundtrack, same as the old soundtrack.
 
My kids are in their 1991 era now. One has already seen sixteen come and go, and I hope she held on. I watch them listening to music, hoping they are getting as much out of it as I did.
 
For all of us live on a timeline…but memories and music are timeless.
 
“And rock-a-bye sweet baby James”
 
Thanks to James Taylor – the original sweet baby James! – for those header lyrics.
 
Westwood Living? No…thank YOU for living in Westwood. See you next month, and I look forward to hearing from you any time at jayresha@comcast.net.