"Sometimes I want to burn a candle for you" : The Rolling Stones Meet the Titans

Music to accompany my words to:

                                               "Winter" 

 It is my hypothesis that everything experienced in life can be explained through 2 things:

1. The Rolling Stones

2. Classical (Greek) mythology

I have research, raw data, and high hopes...

So, I'm sitting on my couch listening to  the Stones. I should be grading more papers, projects, AI-generated word salad from wayward students... It's a melancholy day: low ground fog this morning, billowing gray-black clouds obscure an otherwise cerulean-blue sky, the crush of final exams week (and all the grading still to do), and, and, and...

Listening. Feeling their spoken words. There's NOTHING like a Rolling Stone ballad to put me in a pensive mood. A resistant tear pools up in my eye, and I'm not sure why. Does it refuse to fall because suspension between dual worlds is more logical? Is this an existential crises between the mid-Atlas Mountains versus Mount Olympus? Just as Odysseus clings to a rock to avoid being swept out to sea, a teardrop holds steadfast on the edge of my consciousness. 

Just as Mick and the boys belt out, 'It has been a cold cold winter', indeed.  Blinking away the moisture, I'm in awe. I'm in awe that I reach this state of consciousness.

 Tell me you can listen to this song and not shed a salty tear just begging to be gently brushed from your face.  Maybe, just maybe that exquisite teardrop insists on blazing down my cheek, carving a deep ravine down through my chakras, igniting the roadmap of my soul — like a beacon lighting up the highway for another traveler (Hermes?) to stumble upon out on the open road.

 Winter

Moonlight Mile

Wild Horses

Angie 

Every ballad is a fucking banger, so here goes: The Rolling Stones Meet the Titans and gods, demi-gods, goddesses of Greek Mythology.

Winter: 

Demeter and her grief over Hades taking Persephone. Surely if Demeter shed tears, the world would not have experienced drought, though. Instead, her grief turns the fields 'brown and hollow', as the Stones say. Winter is easily one of my favorite Stones songs:

"It's sure been a cold cold winter. And the light of love is all burned out."  

"And I hope it's going to be a long hot summer. And the light of love will be burning bright."

 Sublime...

Moonlight Mile:  

In Greek mythology, Selene personifies the moon. Steering her chariot across the sky, she falls in love with a mortal and, selfishly, puts him into an eternal slumber so she can look down on him forever and he will never leave her. Intense, right? A radiance of loneliness or just a goddess doing shit messing up mortals lives because she can? 

Mick wrote Moonlight Mile while on tour and pondering life on the road; a journey towards something beautiful yet distant all the while thinking about (what is) home. 

"In the window, there's a face you know. Don't the nights pass slow."

"I've got silence on my radio. Let the air waves flow." 

Wild Horses:

Poseidon, definitely. His (sea)horses as untamed steeds. Beautiful but impossible to control.  

"I know I dreamed you. A sin and a lie. I have my freedom, but I don't have much time." 

"faith has been broken. Tears must be cried. Let's do some living after we die." 

 Angie:

 A bittersweet ballad of salty tears and saying goodbye when the soul of a relationship has moved on. We've all been there, and when reaching that turning point of realizing just how beautiful it is to let go of something we've held onto for too long, there's an understanding of freedom. It's fucking heartbreaking yet sublime, each time. Sublime because of emotions ocean of vastness, bordering on divine-ness, like being in the middle of a thunderstorm or standing before a tragic god/goddess, awaiting your fate — perhaps from the Fates themselves. 

 "With no loving in our souls and no money in our coats, you can't say we're satisfied."

 

 How does this all relate to me in this moment? I suppose final exam week is like the 'Sisyphus' of my semester.  Grading papers is my boulder. The foggy day is the mist rising up from the Underworld, where Hades holds Persephone hostage — or is she now content to be his forced bride? The Stones are the Oracle at Delphi as they speak in riddles to be deciphered.

That salty tear, it's ichor — the blood of the gods/goddesses. Because why? Because the Stones make me feel immortal. Break on through the ravine and behold the River Styx. A pool of water whose reflection defines who I was, am, and am becoming.  Mick and the boys are one, as my ferryman, my Charon, and they are guiding me through this foggy week.  

BOOM. Back to grading 

 

The Birds Sang the Sun Over the Horizon and Pulled Me From my Dreams into this Pre-dawn May Day

 Long ended, the Bewitching Hour. The birds brought me the news as I slumbered. Their pre-dawn chorus reverberating through my body, chiming like an alarm clock. WAKE UP, I did. Somewhere in the audible distance, a muezzin is chanting out the first Adhan for the Fajr (call to) prayer. The birds and muezzin are competing for ear-space. The birds are closer; I tune in. 

 Pre-dawn. The 'Violet' Hour. The blackest of violet still blankets the sky. Saturn and Mars are together glowing on the eastern horizon, yet they are barely visible. Through my sleepy eyes, I witness the duo cloaked beneath some violent violet-gray clouds against violet-scape stillness.

Perhaps that was the newsflash the birds were wanting to divulge to me? Or... already 'feeling' the day is to be spectacular, the birds are energizing, awaiting the sun's activation, and I simply am overhearing their velvet-hushed sounds. 

Birds are loudest at pre-dawn as they either defend their territory or seek out a mate to hook-up with right after last call. The males, the loudest, belt out the most complex songs in order to attract a female, any female. I blush. Feeling the energy. The heat in this dampness of fresh morning before the sun starts heating up the day. What a waking intimacy!

As dawn fast approaches, silhouettes come into focus. Supernatural entities that crossed over into 'our' world, during The Bewitching Hour, are creeping out through the back door before dawn's reign. Into the margins they recede. I sense their lingering shadows losing their depth into the void kaleidoscope of trees. These 'illegal tenants' have overstayed their welcome; birds acting as boundary-keepers (or bouncers!) escort them away, off the premises. The chaotic sensual-natural energy of the night dissolving, a 'clean slate' before the day's demands is soon arriving. 

The changing of the guard. The cacophony of sounds dissenting this reality of the physical world opening up in preparation of the day. What is the day going to hold? 

I dissent. Do I dissent? This beautiful clashing transition moving from The Bewitching Hour's darkness to the clarity of dawn's early light.  

The dogs living out in the campo, just beyond my windows, they are agitated. They dissent. 

I slept through the chaos of the night. Unusual. The birds were simply gossiping about what I had missed, the contagion of the night. Of course. I am safe. Am I safe? Am I safe from the fallout of The Bewitching Hour? 

FOMO. FOMO? Am I envious to have missed The Bewitching Hour's peak? The audacity of the birds; the sentinels calling me back to the world (of order) just in time for the light! 

 I detect a lingering remnant of The Bewitching Hour, though. An ozone still hangs heavy, cutting through the air; the morning breeze has not yet managed to sweep it away. This unspoken language is complicit, with me. I am not just an observer of the night's leftovers; I am an accomplice to them. 

I am fluent in this language. This echo. This knowing-ness how a pen full of indigo-ink energy moves across a page during The Bewitching Hour. The birds might be chirping for the morning, but I'm still vibrating at the frequency of the dark, not wishing for the light to sanitize my thoughts.

My nights contain secrets the day-world can't comprehend