Music Before the Money

Everybody knows that life is way too fast. Even the media - who are responsible for much of this increased speed -  urges evryone to take it easy. So what is an easy plan to slow down, one that is easy to remember?

Okay, get a pad and pen and write these down:

1. First, take 5 and think about what’s important to you in these areas: family, work, life, friends. Do no more than 5 each.
2. List your commitments. You can’t do everything so just get down to the ones that are of deep importance to you.
3. Do less. Like cleaning out your closet, be ruthless in shedding all but 3 important ones. because if you have 7 or 8 and don’t accomplish them it’s just another weapon you will use to beat yourself up.
4. Take time between engagments. Don’t shoe horn all your activities so that too many stop lights will cause yo to be late. Besides the stress build-up - and maybe traffic tickets - being late will give you another excuse to put yourself down. When you have more time you also can appreciate them more and take extra care to make sure they are handled the way you really want.
5. Enjoy every occupation and task. This comes with slowing down and taking time to yourself. Stay in present time, be in the moment. This is what life is all about. take opride in brushing your teeth and chewing your food. Food always tastes better when you’re not wolfing it down. Besides, you paid all that money for a good meal and you probably won’t remember how good it tasted.
6. Stop binge buying. There are many websites for advice in this so I won’t go into them here. However, too much extra stress is loaded onto you when you pay on credit for items that”were too good to pass up.”
7. Find a charity that rings true with you and donate your time - not money. It’s easy to throw a check at something but that’s a hollow feeling. When you dig in and help it goes right to your soul.

And just slow down and smell the roses.

When you’re writing period pieces like historical fiction there’s a good chance you’ll have to include historical figures, as well. Authors like Wilbur Smith - who chronicled African history with personages like Cecil Rhodes - and Herman Wouk - in Wind of War - do this extremely well.

In The Millennium Man and Rockets of the Reich I included Herman Goering, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill, as well as more minor historical characters.

For Hilter and Goering I could only go by newsreels indicating their movements and expression, as well as written material on them. For Stalin I drew from books but also from a great perfomance by Robert Duvall in Stalin.

There is a lot written about Winston Churchill but there are also a great many recordings and interviews. To write Winston I got into character. I imitated him doing bits of his greatest speeches:

“The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day…”

I spoke this part many times imitating his “bulldog” voice and speech inflections. I would also repeat it while driving and jogging. And in mind he would be speaking as I wrote him interacting with my fictional character.

Another Forrest Gump-ism.

Okay, everyone over 45 years-old knows Al Stewart as the guy who did Year of the Cat during the disco era. This album is great and showed off what a talented and versatile artist Al Stewart was and is. However, I like to think of him as the guy who recorded Nostradamus.

Al is a Scottish singer-songwriter who, much like Chris deBurgh, combines music with history. I spent many hours learning the balaika-like guitar parts at the beginning of Roads to Moscow, a song that rivals Lightfoot’s Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald and Chris deBurgh’s Spanish Train in its history and intensity. Only he could have written a song documenting the Blitzkreig invasion of Hitler’s force into Russia in 1941, from the planes being destroyed on the ground to the inevitable defeat of the German army in 1945 with the line, “Two broken Tigers (German tanks) on fire in the night . . . . flicker their souls to the wind.”

Alistar Ian Stewart was born on Sept. 5, 1941 In Glasgow, Scotland. He never really cared for top 40 hits and his earlier 1960’s material was very long, up to 18 minutes! Past Present and Future was released in 1972 and that’s when I first heard of him. Ever since he has been a mainstay on my playlist.

The latest CD I have is Between the Wars which features wonderful guitar work and vocals EQ’d to match 1930’s mid-range tones. With songs like Last Train to Munich (about the 1938 conference where Britain and France gave a chunk of Czechoslovakia to Hitler and, essentially, began the Second World War. And there’s Joe the Georgian (Stalin) where he recounts to the slide into 1939 and World War II with a naive and joyous beat where the underlying theme forshadows the terrifying events going on in the U.S.S.R. at the time.

I just ordered A Beach Full of Shells. Hope it comes in before the weekend.