I'm back. A bit defeated but never fully. I spent most of last week working on graphics for the PSA I did for Media Production. Something that I really enjoy doing and admittedly avoiding the things I did not. I had an idea for a series of graphics for the project that were difficult to pull off. I love a challenge - in the graphics world that is. Obviously I didn't write much. That doesn't mean it wasn't out of mind. Quite the contrary. We were spending the week on the Texas coast. My wife would catch me in a stare while at the beach or pool and ask, " Are you thinking about writing again?" She knows me well. I was experiencing writer's remorse, or grief or whatever they call it. I spent my time pondering - what can I write about? No rush of ideas would come. I sat at my laptop late at night and would try letting words pour out free association style. Didn't happen. So let it be known that I wasn't not doing the work - I was experiencing brain lock. Not a broken spirit. A neurological short circuit if you will.
I started to write about an experience I had while taking a sunset tour of Aransas Bay. I have four barren attempts saved in the depths of this blog. It is here that I want attempt again. My family joined 30 people on a dinky two-level boat traveling to the outer banks in search of dolphins and a stunning sunset. Captain Jake - a professional fisherman and part time tour guide piloted the vessel from the top of the boat. A rather plain fellow and not at all salty like you might imagine. Salt and pepper hair, clean shaven, electric pink t-shirt, khaki shorts and flip-flops. He had the air of construction foreman about him - a problem solver yet unassuming. As we pulled away from the dock - a very familiar sound reached my ears via the set of radio-shack speakers bolted to the four corners of the below deck ceiling. "Margaritaville" by Jimmy Buffet. The sound was scratchy and over-modulated as if cloaked by a layer of salt, sand and rust. It was, sadly, still recognizable. It occurred to me that I've heard this song in similar situations. Bars in Orlando and Miami. A catamaran cruise my wife and I took while honeymooning in Barbados. Numerous snorkeling expeditions in the Bahamas and Caymans. Even a bus tour in Hawaii. This song is everywhere and tightly wound in beach tourism culture. I just sniffed at the song and went above to get away from the annoying noise.
Now, with my feet firmly on terra firma I began to think why is this song so prevalent. Is it because the tour guides really like the song? Or, more likely, that the tour guides have a certain rotation of music that they think the tourists want or expect to hear? I wonder if Jimmy knew what he was about to unleash on countless tourist destinations. I'm sure he didn't. He was writing a song that spoke to him at that moment in his life. I haven't researched where he was mentally when he wrote this song. Perhaps I need to. He probably wasn't in a funk though. I wonder what he would have produced if he were going through a nasty divorce, the death of a child or taking a writing course at that point in his career. Certainly not Margaritaville. And what song would be in its stead had that song never been written? We'll probably never know unless time and multidimensional travel are discovered. And even then - would scientists want to discover something as mundane as what the world would have been like without Margaritaville? Doubtful. But it's the miniscule details around us that shape our world. Perhaps without Jimmy's songs - the world might have been plunged in to a thousand years of darkness. Who knows. The next time I hear his music - I'm not going to grimace. I'm simply going to say, "Thanks Jimmy." Thanks for saving the world as we know it.
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