rave on

I'm listening to possibly the greatest tribute album of all time.  Just about the coolest people in the music industry got together and made a collection of Buddy Holly songs.  The Black Keys, Patti Smith, The Detroit Cobras and Lou Reed, to name a few.  Check out http://music.aol.com/new-releases-full-cds/spinner#/1 to listen as you read this.

I grew up loving Buddy Holly and was obsessed with the Ritchie Valens movie, La Bamba.  I always looked forward to seeing Buddy Holly on-screen because as a kid I thought it was the real guy.  Of time and space, I was not yet aware.  As an 8 year old, when I was able to compute death and biographies, I thought it was tragic that so many talented people died in the same plane crash. I used to lipsync to Chantilly Lace with a broomstick and a mirror when I was cleaning my room, as if that was the only song the Big Bopper ever came out with.  Needless to say it took me forever to clean my room, and it still does.

Apparently there is a huge pair of Buddy Holly glasses near the crash site.  A nice way to mark the spot.

I wonder, if I had the option, how would I mark the places that changed my life?  On the streets of Ottawa, a pair of plastic lips for my first kiss, in the bushes near my old house, a bronze Players King Size for my first cigarette, and somewhere in the sands of Prince Edward Island, stardust for my hope of the future.  Sounds like a cool idea for a music video, I give you permission to use it.  But give me a cameo, k?  :)

I also think this would make for a nice reflection.  Make a timeline of moments that changed your life, and where they happened, then choose a monument to honour that.  Revisit the places in your mind and place the monument there, pay respect and move on.  Some bad times come to mind, life isn't always peachy, but nonetheless, those are times that affect us and steer us in directions we go to in order to learn from... most of the time...

I think I'd place a big, giant, CN Tower-sized Detour sign on Charlevoix, a street in Saint-Hilaire where I found out my parents were getting divorced.  Maybe that sounds dramatic, but you can get around the CN tower.  I definitely got stuck there for a couple of years.  But that's what adolescence is all about, right?  Detours.

Yesterday I was at the theatre, there for improv, and in between the workshop and the show I spaced out.  Sometimes the walls will just catch me in a moment of pure admiration.  I'll look around and think of all the crazy nights that have been spent there, the people and the risks they've taken in matters of the heart.  I went out back and took it all in.  I looked at the tree that's growing and I reminded myself of a few moments I would mark with a big cliff, maybe I took a plunge and didn't know where I'd end up, but here I am to tell the story, so I guess I'm doing okay.

The ground we walk on holds so much history, so many stories we don't know about, so many magical and emotional moments that have been absorbed as memories in the hearts and minds of the strangers that pass us by.  Maybe that's just a messy back alley of a theatre, but for me, that's where I took a leap of faith and now I proudly reflect.

Dearest by The Black Keys for Buddy Holly,

Katie