Regrooving the dream – Patty Larkin
I admit I ought to be discussing Red=Luck or even the guitar thing she's doing now. Hell the record is 5 years old. But after years of ownership, I was finally moved by it. So I thought I’d write.
I admit, I wasn’t that impressed with his record when it came out; I saw it as a lesser version of her seminal Stranger’s World. It lacked the "hits", the full on Rock in Roll of Johnny was a Pyro, the ubiquitous duet with Bruce Cockburn Don’t Explain or the infectious Dear Diary. This record was none of that: it was moody, brooding. If Stranger's was pounding the steering wheel on a hot august day, this Dream was a last walk on an October beach, long after you've closed the house for the winter.
But I was a kid then too, perpetually 23 with an eyes on the oh-so-distant future, and my head squarely up my own bottom. It wasn't until middle age snuck up on me and stopped me dead in my tracks that Patty started to make sense. Regrooving the dream is a woman taking a good hard look at where she is out here in the middle. It’s the epiphany that maybe “I’m hard to live with” isn’t just a wry joke any more, and a sense that maybe if you had seen this coming, you would’ve done things differently. It’s the culmination of that moment when you realize you are pretty much alone in the world, and that you really always were.
We all come to this place sooner or later, I’ve seen it happen to so many others; I tried to walk around it, sidestep it, or accept it gracefully. Doesn’t matter what you do; it’s always a kick in the groin. God’s own private joke, the one only he gets. But with all this comes the revelation that we are okay alone. Its not what we’d prefer, we are by design a communal animal, but we can make our beds and cook our own supper. You may have lost the joie de vivre of youth a long time ago, or you may still hang desperately onto it, blowing the dying coals in the hope of one last gasp of flame, it doesn’t matter. The world keeps turning, the sun comes up, and you either accept that or you don’t. Regrooving the Dream then is about acceptance, not just tolerance but a true embrace of the Now; life gives us a lot of time between adolescence and old age, if we want it. It too is a Good Thing, better because we now know what really matters. Patty Larkin knows this too.
