Original image by There Stands the Glass.
I’m baffled by the prevailing practice of rereading books, watching previously viewed television programs or movies and keeping familiar music in heavy rotation. Repetition is anathema to me. Yet there’s a downside to my compulsion to constantly move forward.
A long-neglected friend slapped me in the face the other day. I was bowled over by a furious reading of “Sedan Delivery” as I listened to Way Down in the Rust Bucket, a recently released 1990 live set by Neil Young and Crazy Horse. The loopy rocker was my favorite song on the astonishing 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps.
“Sedan Delivery” hadn’t crossed my mind in more than a decade. In spite of my regular protestations that “I don’t listen to that kind of music anymore,” I love the song just as much as I did 42 years ago. My embargo on revisiting the past may need to be reconsidered.