What made the songs from Rock-tober Year 1 really special was they were easy, low-hanging fruit. With zero effort I could rattle off 31 songs that were perennially on my playlist and why. As the years went on, I had to constantly dig deeper and deeper into my collection and sometimes (Whoa!) venture outside my comfort zone. Yeah, I'm looking at you, P!nk.
I thought this year would have been easier seeing as I've given myself latitude to bring back some of my very personal favorites, but the opposite problem surfaced. I had to winnow down a set list of 279 songs to just 31. While I wasn't sure what the final album side would look like, today's song was definitely making the cut. Of all of Bob Seger's singles, this one is the most meaningful to me. I just had to figure out how to work it in.
On a recent road trip, when we were cruising the backroads of northeast Georgia, I was telling Andrea I've been having trouble figuring out how to intro this song into this rotation of Rock-tober. She thought about it as we continued down the country lane flanked by fall-foliaged trees. Knowing what the song invoked in me she said, "You should write about important moments and people in your life."
It made sense. In the music video, Seger appears to be looking at scenes of his younger self. Memories of moments in time, along with the people in his life who made them special. The look of wistful contemplation on his face as these vignettes played out before him is highly relatable. If you're reading these words, there's a good chance you're in some of the memories periodically replaying in my mind. It's my good fortune that I have innumerable ones to choose from.
An impassable barrier separates the older Seger and his younger self, so they never interact and never exchange words. That's as it should be. For as much as we may yearn for it, the past is unattainable. Besides, it's still a fact that older me still can't stand movie spoilers, so I'm fairly certain that younger me wouldn't want spoilers about his life. Regardless, I've said before I have utterly no interest in changing the past.
But I was curious about younger me's outlook, so I went back and read what he wrote 10 years ago about what's become my personal anthem.
The older I get, the more I relate to this song. Seger was in his 40's when he wrote it, and the lyrics describe an older guy looking back on his life thus far, mirroring my own internal dialog. Do I have regrets? Sure, but none of them are incapacitating. Have I accomplished all the dreams from my youth? Nope. Some died while others have been changed or tempered and refined by life, and I still believe in them. Oh, and I still have no time for "these hucksters and their schemes".
Damn. Younger me just laid it out there. Maybe he wasn't such a lunkhead after all.
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