Phil Collins and Grey Gardens

Today I made the four hour drive from Houston to Dallas. It was a very pleasant drive, with a GORGEOUS sunset at the end. These are things I like to do while driving long distances:

1. Call old friends
2. Call not-so-old friends (truth be told, I really hate talking on the phone any other time)
3. study operas I am working on... like Dido & Aeneas. yay
4. listen to NPR's Fresh Air on my Ipod
5. ponder the deep mysteries of life
6. plan crafty ideas
7. try not to drive off the road as I write down said crafty ideas
5. Play a game I call "Crap, I forgot I even owned this!"...best played when cleaning your storage unit OR shuffling through a huge binder of CDs.

After a few rounds of the above game (including a foray into a collection of Beethoven piano sonatas, the Mamas & the Papas, and a Bernstein songbook), I ran across Phil Collins' Serious Hits...Live!. I am sure it makes me a super cornball, but HOW AWESOME IS THIS CD?
Ok, it is full of AWESOME songs like A Groovy Kind Of Love, Easy Lover, You Can't Hurry Life and Take Me Home but my favorite is Separate Lives featuring Marilyn Martin. How great are these lyrics?....

You called me from the room in your hotel
All full of romance for someone that you met
And telling me how sorry you were, leaving so soon
And that you miss me sometimes when you’re alone in your room
Do I feel lonely too?

You have no right to ask me how I feel
You have no right to speak to me so kind
We can’t go on just holding on to time
Now that we’re living separate lives

It is that first transition into the chorus that really kills me. You can almost hear the possibility hanging in the air... the moment of decision before closing that door. For me, this is a song about two people with a long history. They have gone down this road before. Maybe more than once. And finally have come to realize that, whatever it is that draws them back to each other again and again, the right thing to do is walk away. Familiar much?

Here is a pretty crap video but at least you can listen to the entire awesome song...



And in other news... I watched Grey Gardens / The Beales of Grey Gardens - Criterion Collection (2-disc set)for the first time this week. It was, in the words of both designer Todd Oldham and my pal Susan Draper, "like watching a train wreck you cannot tear your eyes away from", and I cannot stop thinking about it. Here is the Grey Gardens clip of the day: