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Posted By: UT
Date: 18-Aug-2007-17:14:54
Subject: Gettin' ready to be On The Road music

So, here I am packing for Yet Another Move, and searching my cool black CD holders for music to get me through it. Sound familiar?

It should. We're a movin'-around bunch of people. Studying with Rama, you got used to packing up your act and taking it on the road. We moved a lot. And I was a military brat, so I grew up moving every year or two. I got used to it and kept doing it, and so I was doing it even before I met Rama.

And it's such a RUSH, isn't it? Packing up your stuff and moving somewhere weird, just 'cause it's weird? Remember Malibu? Remember Boston, the first incarnation? Of its next incarnation? Some of you remember San Diego, and the move to L.A. Some were on the bus for the move from L.A. to Palo Alto. And then the move to Virginia, and after that, New York. Chicago. Hartford. Amsterdam. Santa Fe. Paris. Sauve.

And now Spain. I speak 20 words of Spanish. I need music.

So what music do YOU listen to when you're packing for a big move? I've got a couple of weeks of packing ahead of me before I take off, so I'm lookin' for "DJ requests" here. You're a bunch of cool froods...what music would *you* listen to if you were getting about to move?

If you're anything like me, the music system is pretty much the last thing to be packed. It *takes* music to get through packing up all of your shit, and rediscovering how much of it owns you.

I'm finding that the Grateful Dead's "Without A Net" works just great. Recorded live, no retakes. It's very we-had-to-get-it-right-the-first-
time-and-we-think-we-did-and-that-you'll-find-it-danceable music, and tends to keep a spring in the step when your back is saying, "Stop this silliness...you're OLD, ferchrissakes."

Some very sweet solos by Jerry, too, especially on this album's version of Cassidy, one of my all-time favorites. Garcia, whatever his excesses, could get really OUT there, and if you tuned in, he could take you with him to those further shores. He still can.

My rule for packing is the same for this move as it has been for all the others I've made in my life. If I haven't touched it *since* the last move, I'm probably never going to, so out it goes. In Sauve, all you have to do is take the stuff you no longer want and put it on the ledge outside Fouzia's Moroccan épicierie, and it'll be gone within half an hour. And someone will be *using* it, and *enjoying* it, whatever it is.

It's like reincarnation, only with objects, not souls. Then again, maybe my old Thorens turntable had a soul...who knows...all I know is that I never plugged it in to the sound system while I lived here, so I am in all likelihood never going to anywhere I live. So it now lives with a very excited young French boy, who snatched it up off the ledge before I was ten meters away. He had a big smile on his face, and seeing it, so did I.

I just hit the Back button to replay Cassidy. Twice. It's a nice song to listen to when getting ready to make a big move. I met Neal Cassady once, and if my brief encounter was any measure, he was far more out there than Kerouac portrayed him as Dean Moriarty. And the lyrics by John Perry Barlow never fail to inspire me and get me looking forward to being On The Road myself. It's a lovely "goodbye song," one that reminds me of the bittersweet taste of goodbyes, but also of the joylike taste of new hellos.


I have seen where the wolf has slept by the silver stream.
I can tell by the mark he left you were in his dream.
Ah, child of countless trees.
Ah, child of boundless seas.
What you are, what you're meant to be
Speaks his name, though you were born to me,
Born to me,
Cassidy...

Lost now on the country miles in his Cadillac.
I can tell by the way you smile he's rolling back.
Come wash the nighttime clean,
Come grow this scorched ground green,
Blow the horn, tap the tambourine
Close the gap of the dark years in between
You and me,
Cassidy...

Quick beats in an icy heart.
catch-colt draws a coffin cart.
There he goes now, here she starts:
Hear her cry.
Flight of the seabirds, scattered like lost words
Wheel to the storm and fly.

Fare thee well now.
Let your life proceed by its own design.
Nothing to tell now.
Let the words be yours, I'm done with mine.
Fare thee well now.
Let your life proceed by its own design.
Nothing to tell now.
Let the words be yours, I'm done with mine.


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