#351 Brothers in Arms--Dire Straits (now #352)

This album was kinda like getting really excited for a massage and then realizing, mid-massage, that the massage therapist is going to talk the entire time and mostly about your back tattoo.  And you have to talk to her because she is slaving away.  And you can't complain about it because then you're the asshole who complained about being burdened by talking to the person who spent the last hour giving you a massage.

In other words, it was great, but shut the fuck up Mark.  Your lyrics don't say anything but nonsense and you can't sing.  You sang about appliances.  fucking appliances.  and you said "be bop a lula baby" more than once.  Just play the guitar and shut your face.

There is a special place in hell for people who spoil good massages and music with their excessive mouth noises.

I thought that "So Far Away" and "Why Worry" were the best songs on the album.  I could feel the emotion, once I turned down the blathering singer in my EQ, and felt at peace and some sadness too.

It occurred to me though, that so much of this project, becomes the glue in my day-to-day life.  The songs that I listen to throughout each period of time marinate and stick in the cracks of my reality. They take all the little things that happen and tint them with their melodies.  They play in the background while I receive pictures of my newborn nephew, they gloss over words on title opinions that I read daily, and this album was played all through this Christmas season showering baby Jesus with color-tvs and be bop a lulas.  Maybe certain songs and albums mean so much to us, not because they are great, but because they remind us of good chapters from previous eternities or specific mind-states.  They are one of the only links back to those memories, long forgotten by those who shared parts in them.  I never knew that a person could go through so many lives in just one lifetime.  Cats may have nine, but I believe we have nine hundred.

You see, my beloved cat, Socrates (Socats), disappeared on the 16th.  He and I have been traveling companions to the grave together since 2008 when I found him in my first apartment complex right after I graduated college.  Or, he found me.  Together, we set off on our new adventure.  He slept with me, purred at me when I was sad, pushed beer boxes around with his head, walked with me in the mornings, would drink water with his paw out of my bathtub, would sleep on my books, killed a rabbit once, and shat on the carpet many a time.  The two days before he left, he was unnaturally affectionate, preferring to lay all over me and sleeping the whole night through right next to my head.  Then I let him outside, like always.  and poof.  he was gone.

The last eleven days, I have tirelessly scoured my neighborhood.  I get a glimmer of hope and am immediately shot down in an exhausting roller coaster of despair.

All of life is letting go of it.  Letting go of your childhood, of the toys you played with as a child, all of your dreams as they one by one slip through your fingers, of your denial, of your favorite cat, of your mistakes, your childhood friends, your high school friends, your college friends, your post-college friends, your grudges, your anger, your failures, your hopes, your family members, and christmas once again.  And with each set of let-gos, a new chapter begins.

I played "why worry" from this album over and over as I searched for lost Socats.  His life, if it is still with us, has changed and begun a new chapter.  His fate is out of my hands.  I don't know if he was adopted by an old ass lady who never leaves her house, eaten by a coyote, got a letter from Hogwarts, or ran into Gandalf who asked him to carry the ring of power to Mordor.  All I know is that worrying about the most likely answer won't bring him back to me anymore than wishing I were a child again will make me ten.

We pass through so many doors and so many people (and animals!!) before we finally part this world in this lifetime.  But we are all traveling companions to the grave, as Charles Dickens once said...So, why worry?

Thanks Dire Straits for playing music through yet another dreary december.

Warner Bros., 1985

Mark Knopfler started writing "Money for Nothing" when he overheard a New York appliance salesman's anti-rock-star, anti-MTV rant. The song, of course, became a huge MTV hit, and this album shows off Knopfler's incisive songwriting and lush guitar riffs on "Walk of Life" and "So Far Away."

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/500-greatest-albums-of-all-time-20120531/dire-straits-brothers-in-arms-20120524#ixzz2GK1jyxkl 
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