[Alan Parsons Project] For many years, there were a lot of things I vaguely remember from childhood. Glimpses of moments in my mind that I couldnt quite place. One of them was a moment when I must have been about 5 (maybe) and all I remember was a bedroom somewhere with a milk crate that had record albums in it. There was a lamp and some dust covers like the room was being painted so it seemed bare. But in that milk crate were albums, and I distinctly remember two of them or three. One of which (I think) was a Loverboy album (Working For The Weekend), maybe Foreigner (Jukebox Hero), and then two albums (among many) that really only stuck in my mind as glimpses of oddity. For years these sorts of memories stayed with me only as an album cover that looked like there was a crying blond woman on the back in a comic book style and I could never really place it. The other is what I later on referred to as the Space Potato album (like a silver Mr Potato Head). There was an arcade game that I remembered from childhood as well where it was like some Karate Guy punching mirrors to save babies and sometimes the baby would pop out red and if you collected it then youd be like super macho dude for awhile. So I spent a lot of my life like that... with fragments of memories that I couldnt quite place or put together. Over the years, I finally found out that the comic book blonde was from Alan Parsons Project Dont Answer Me and that the silver Space Potato was J. Geils Band (I think). At one point I did find out what that arcade game was but then promptly forgot... I actually went through a retro arcade forum to track it down, and I went so far as to get the ROM to play it on MAME. Its interesting to know that all those years later the game which I played like crazy at the local gas station thoroughly kicked my ass on the first stage. A lot in my life went like that... I have fragments. Maybe a visual glance or a smell I couldnt place. Like up until I went into the military, I never associated the smell of mothballs/cedar with mothballs. It was a smell I remembered from when I was little and played in the basement over at my aunt Shirleys with my cousin Jimmy (over in Franklin NJ I believe). But I never associated the smell to what caused it other than I liked the smell and associated it with the basement where we played. So years later in the military, when I was in boot camp, we were getting our clothes together and being told what we were being issued, counting it out and stuff, when I pulled out the black socks and that smell hit me. I got excited but also confused because I hadnt known what caused it at the time... so I raised my hand and asked my CO if he could tell me what that smell was. At first he was confused but after a moment he finally said You mean the mothballs and cedar? Are you saying you dont know what mothballs and cedar smell like? No, sir. I know the smell but never knew what caused it. I know of mothballs and cedar but never knew directly what they smelled like. I had never put the two together, sir. And so a glimpse into my mind, and how a lot of things are jumbled and fragmented from my past. Discontinuity of memories. I think its one of those quirks about me that most people dont understand. For all the amazing stuff that I *do* know or can put together, (you can ask Kevin Simkins or Kevin P. Russell about that) there is just a block of my mind that is like an abstraction of disconnected memories floating around. Which is why I tend to be distant sometimes or unable to convey thoughts. Its like I missed a block of life somewhere and never remembered it... like sporadic amnesia. Its frustrating at times, but also rewarding when I rediscover them in full or finally make sense of it. I think maybe this is one of the underlying reasons vagueness and discontinuity are a pet peeve. Something either is or it isnt... I have enough grey area in my mind among the fog of memories. I think in probabilities and possibilities extrapolated into the future, but nothing is sure until it actually is. Somewhere between ignorance and genius is where my mind resides. Moments of brilliance and then fragments of unknowing. For some, they revere me as a genius... and I admit for some things I am. But there is that other side of me... that sadness and ambiguity of mind where I cant grasp something that I should and it just refuses to register. Thats usually the part of me that people find too heavy or intimidating. Because when things become vague or distant... when the pattern recognition kicks in, my mind goes into overdrive to deconstruct it and find out solid answers. Especially when it matters... It tries to make sense of things whether I want it to or not... it is just how I am hard wired mentally. Because my mind thinks theres an important part of me missing, and if only I could better understand myself and others... itll start to come back. Unfortunately, few people seem to stick around when that happens and work with me about it. They read into it their own insecurities and faults as if I am outwardly judging... when in reality, Im just trying to grasp and understand... for good and for bad. My mind is a jumbled place of fragments and brilliance. It wants to make sense of the world and others whenever it does not make sense, because it already has so much that it has lost that I believe my mind fears losing the present as well as the past the most.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 01:52:55 +0000
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