It’s a warn night here in L.A. They tell me, via the weatherman on the news, that it’s supposed to cool down and rain again later this week. A bit unusual for April. But, it’s all good with me. I love the rain. I prefer the cool.
 
We’ve had a lot of rain this year. A few houses have slide down the hills around the area. That’s not good if that’s your house. But, for me, the rains have been a blessing in a year where there’s not been too many, at least not so far...
 
I’m sitting here in the late night. …The late night as I tend to do.
 
Once upon a time, in the long ago and the far-far away, I would write literature late into the late night. Compose, with a bottle of the grape by my side. Those days, (I mean those nights), seems to be long gone. …Gone, at least for now.
 
But then, not now, is what this piece is all about…
 
As I tend to do, before I plan to hit the sheets, I pull up some music videos to watch on various stations upon the air waves. Just a something in the nothingness of life. A moment to chill. A moment to reflect. A moment to engage in the movement of the notes. A moment to find the silence in between the notes.
 
Sometimes the music videos are fun to watch. A needed distraction.
 
Anyway, and in any case, I was watching and listening to the music video, Suicide, by the band Moonvampire. That video features the cast from the TV series, Chilling Adventure of Sabrina. That show was the next step in the (kinda) remake of, Sabrina: The Teenage Witch. The song is good. The music video is good. The cast of the show fades in and out from the main stage dancing. Interesting…
 
I don’t really know why or for whatever reason, that song hit a spot in me, and it caused me to flashback to a music video from the past, Just Another Night, by Mick Jagger. That song so kinda described my life in the way back when. Back when I was bouncing around the globe all the time, and I spent more than a few lonely nights, in, as Mick puts it, “I’m freezing in this hundred-dollar hotel room.” That was a good piece of change, equaling a high-end hotel back when that song was released in ‘85. Now, you can’t even find a decent motel for that price. …Me, I also spent, more than a few, not so lonely nights… But, that song always hits a note of remembrance in me. A time in Tokyo…
 
Further Flash Back: Kind funny/interesting, I guess… The last time I checked into the Hilton International in Tokyo, located in Shinjuku, the staff member at the desk asked me if this was my first time at the hotel. Why they asked me that, I don’t know??? Why they didn’t have my record laid out in front of them, I have no idea??? My response, “You realize, I have lived at this hotel for more than a year of my life.”
 
Back in the 80s, when the hotel was new, and into the 90s, I stayed at that hotel more times than I can even count.  A week here, a week there, and so on… Over and over and over again…
 
Same in hotels like the Hilton International in Hong Kong, in Central, before it became an office building. The Oriental Hotel in Bangkok. So much time in those hotels…
 
But, that’s the thing about life, you live your life and who does it matter to but you?
 
Just Another Night: The female lead/love interest of that music video was Rae Dawn Chong. She describes, how years before, when she was a teenager, she had sex with, a much older, Mick Jagger. She has no regrets. At least from what I have read. Now/then, 1985, there she is, by this point, a major movie star, playing the infatuated love interest of the performer. It was a different time.
 
And, this is also the thing about life, times change… Ideas, morals, realities; everything changes… You can’t compare today to what was yesterday, because it is all so different.
 
This is an essential thing that you must realize about life. If you weren’t there then, you weren’t there then. You can never understand what the, “Feelings,” were. So, don’t try to pretend that you know.
 
As for me, the Flash Back was great. Good song, interesting music video. I wish I could go back. But, I can’t. None of us can.
 

I was there then. But, this is here, now. Sure, I wish I could be twenty-five years old and dancing in Tokyo again, living in a hundred-dollar hotel room. But, that just ain’t the reality of the reality. So, I guess all I’ve got is to sit back, a glass of the grape in my hand, typing a few words of poetry at this keyboard, and remember what I can remember by allowing songs that hit that spot in me to guide me back in time.