TomFlannery.com

Both came to me today.

This morning I noticed the trees are starting to turn. The most beautiful time of year is upon us. I instinctively reached for my phone to grab a picture, forgetting that I haven’t had a phone for 2 weeks….since dropping it in a cup of Diet Coke with ice. So the photo will have to live on in my memory (it looked something like this pic but not the same). Someday I may get another phone, although there is something quite liberating about not having one, In truth it’s not much more than a tracking device you willingly carry everywhere you go, ensuring you’ll have zero privacy…..thanks to…..well….you. We needn’t worry about the NSA. They can just sit back and watch us spy on each other and read all about it on facebook and twitter.

Later in the day it came to me that if me and my friends live a full life, perhaps to 70 and beyond, this is what we’re going to have to get through. .

Bob Dylan is gonna die. Neil Young. Mick and Keith (well maybe not Keith). Sir Paul McCartney. Pete and Roger. Randy Newman. The guys in Los Lobos. Ray and Dave Davies. Chuck Berry. Jerry Lee Lewis. Little Richard. BB King. Fats.Tom Petty. Bruce Springsteen. It’s gonna be like losing Elvis…..over and over and over again, We’ve never been without these people. They changed the world, and they’re not faded pictures in dusty photo albums. Most of them are probably out there on some stage right now, playing music. They have never not been with us. When they pass, then what? It’s gonna be like trees in the fall going from green to winter bare. No more colors.

It was a scary thought and I wasn’t sure where it had come from. We are going to lose them all. I remember Elvis dying. And John Lennon of course. And then Kurt Cobain…..which affected me more than I ever thought it would. I cried when I heard the news. I was alone. I never cried in front of anyone, because there was no one in my life at that time that could have understood what losing him meant to me. All these years later there’s still no one.

Nothing lasts forever except a great song. Even the fall is temporary.

They are not going to burn out. They are not going to fade away. They’re just gonna go like the rest of us. Time is gonna run out. What do we do then?

Enjoy the explosion of colors. With a great soundtrack.

In a bit…

–tf