Lost memories. . .

These snippets of verse were an outgrowth of the first tentative steps of a youth into the unknown -- a life beyond childhood and adolescence.  Of a young lad searching for an undefined missing something, a longing for its realization, yet without knowing exactly what it is or a way forward to make it so.

What were the thoughts at the time?  What were the hidden dreams underlying the words?  Whatever they were, have hopes and expectations been fulfilled decades later, looking back?  Memory has long since faded; at this remove there is only speculation, recollections of what was, filtered by what has become -- our only residual evidence: faded memories and the few deeply felt words that have endured.

Interpretations of those lost memories follow verse and fragment.

. . .Lost memories, continued

Hereafter follows the residue of ill-recalled memories, a lifetime later, of our thoughts and musings that induced putting pen to paper.

Verses

The first three pieces were published in our college student newsletter during my senior year, saved from oblivion by humanity's urge to digitize every word ever committed to paper -- perhaps the modern version of the Gutenberg press or the Library of Alexandria. I am eternally grateful to those who brought these particular bits of personal history back to reality.

"Search by Night".  Was it mere poetry, or was there a deeper meaning?  The latter, for a certainly, for the inchoate undercurrent impelling the penning of this short verse is without question, even decades later.  It was an expression of inarticulate longings of a shy and lonely young lad for the love of a good woman, for a life together rather than alone.  "Kiss of a falling star" is metaphor for that at the time, but no longer, unrequited dream.

"A Time to Remember."  What, exactly, is remembered?  Was it an echo of Carl Sandberg's "Grass" -- "I am the grass, let me work?" -- a somber reflection on countless lost generations of young men who perished on the battlefield, a window into the past that resonates even today.  Or, was it a fainter and more distant reverberation of the Christian crucifixion, an event that profoundly altered the course of Western civilization?

At that age, I loved poetry, especially English poets (except for the Romantics!).  John Dunne, Thomas Gray, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, a list too long to continue.  But by the time of college, war was no longer an adventure to read about and to vicariouslly relive the heroics and triumphs of brave soldiers, but rather an insatiable consumer of vast numbers of young lives of my own generation, "Grass" was suddenly a horrifying foreshadowing of what my own fate might be.

At the time, I was also beginning to reflect on the meaning and significance of religion and it's place in the cultural and moral underlayment of civilization.  Did this rather mystical and ambiguous poem encapsulate that quest?  Was the far away hill Golgotha -- the Skull?  In the West there is no cultural mythos so enduring, so iconic as this.  Did  the harsh ring of metal on metal echo nails being hammered.  Or, was it the clanking of tank treads, going into battle?  Absent clear recollection there is no certain answer.  It may even be that both images, mirrored, are reflected together, superimposed each on the other and fused together by the mind's ever shifting power of illusion.

"Time and the Seasons."  Was this the product of a dawning realization of the impenetrability and futility of human events, of never ending wars, calamaties, and human tradegies, of people and forces in opposition --  combined with an utter inability to alter the course of such events?  Was it in fact a reaction to the Vietnam War, yet another sacrifice of a generation of men to the god of war -- a threat that loomed, all too real, over each young man of that generation, my generation?

Or, was it an expression of that longing alluded to above, for a future that fulfilled unspoken but deeply felt yearnings, a future still veiled in uncertainty yet bounded by a sense that there was no path to its realization?  At this point I can't recall the impulse behind those verses.  I only wish I could travel back in time to that era and sit together with the young lad who recorded rhymes of thought in late hours and quiet moments of reverie.

Lyrical interlude

I've never been skilled in the musical arts -- but I could write.  So when two of my dorm mate best friends and a third student composed a tune they liked, for ukulele and banjo, they turned to me to write lyrics.  Naturally, a young college student's thoughts turn to love, and "The Autumn Wind" was the result.  One of the three converted the completed song to a musical score, and, like the musical cognisenti we imagined we were (alas, the Grand Ole Oprey never called), we decided to mail it to one of ourselves by registered letter, thus establishing copyright claims. (As if anyone would want to pirate it!)

At that point, we drew straws to see who would be custodian of the finished song.  They were probably disappointed when my name, the only non-musician in the group, came up, but I was secretly happy to have an enduring record of those precious lines of verse.  And so decades later, the letter and song have emerged from long dormant files, the lyrics to be reproduced below.  Photo reproductions of the original sheet music follow.

Our fleeting moment of glory came when the school held a talent night.  My three erstwile musician friends were scheduled to perform the number on stage for our assembled student body.  I arrived for the event, not wishing to miss my own moment of fame when my authorship of lyrics was announced.

To my surprise, I discovered an empty seat next to one of the school's most admired beauties, a pixie blonde of mysterious and aloof demeanor, widely regarded by the college's aspiring young squires as one of the fairest but least approachable coeds on campus -- remote and forbidding amongst the hoi polloi.  Although I had no idea if she knew me from Adam, and despite my own trepidations, I decided that this was too good an opportunity to pass up, so I took the seat.   Courage came only from the secret hope that public songwriter credit might elevate me above others vying for her attention and favor.

When our song was introduced and my name called for lyrics she startled a little and glanced oddly at me -- she apparently did know who I was.  But, that was the high water mark; sadly public notoriety impressed the damsel not at all, and in the end I think she was glad to escape to her dorm, away from the perhaps unwelcome attentions of a secret admirer.

In retrospect, it may have been for the best, for despite her beauty my awkward attempts to further catch her attention were met with polite rebuffs; she chose to say little on the night, and she showed even less interest in the budding song writer seated next to her.  Aloof was all there was that evening; she was as unwilling to carry a conversation as I was incapable of overcoming inhibitions against making a beginning.  Ah, the vicissitudes of a smitten young swain.

The Autumn Wind

Music

Larry Napier

Dave Gentry

John Pleasant

Lyrics

Mike Masters

(Original sheet music:  Sheet 1  Sheet 2  Sheet 3  Opens in separate windows.)

Fragments

A few incomplete lines remain, mere fragements never developed.  However they arose, these are the last of the memory lane recollections -- for now. . .

Molten Moon.  This was a disconnected fragement, perhaps an unconscious reflection of the language of poets, romantics and mysics from time immemorial.  Note that there is a stubborn refusal on the part of this little bit of poetical doggerel to conform to the realities of the Moon's orbit -- at three days past new Luna presents only a thin waxing sliver, hardly the look of a "molten copper ingot," as appealing as that image may be.  Call it poetic license, because it preserves textual meter better than orbitally accurate alternatives.

The Cold Wind.  A lamentation on the futility and unknowability of life?  A recapitulation of humanity's eternal longing for freedom from struggle and strife?  If so, it echoes the theme of "Time and the Seasons."  Not an unusual byway, one would think, for a thoughful and introspective youth who tended to see absolutes in every direction.  Whatever it meant then, this may have been a fragment of a longer now unrecalled work that, if it was once longer, is sadly now lost.  As with the previous fragment, "dig for oil" is another bit of poetic license, replacing "drill" for no particular reason other than rhythm and breaking the symmetry with "till".

Will more of it, or of others, eventually emerge from long buried memory?  Likely not -- but then until recently I had no recollection of this one's existence.  It just bubbled up unbidden from torn fragments of forgotten memories, dim shadows of a lost past life . . .