February 28, 2021 – First of all, I want to thank everyone for being patient with me. I’ve had only holiday stories and then a Superbowl story for weeks. I feel a bit out of practice on substantive stories (or substantive for me), and frankly I’m not really listening to anything except talk radio, so this story will be a bit strange.

In breaks here and there from my new talk radio obsession, I have noticed there are new songs all over the place. There is an entire album by The Pretty Reckless. There’s an entire album by Alice Cooper. There’s new music by Greta Van Fleet. There’s a new song by the Foo Fighters. There’s new song by Cheap Trick of all people. And everyone’s favorite artist to hate on, although not me, Billy Eilish has a documentary of her extensive music career in her parent’s house on Apple TV, or whatever Apple’s streaming format is called. Taylor Swift cancelled her only dates this year – stadium dates in the United States and South America over Coronavirus; she says she isn’t sure when touring will ever happen again, but then again, she’s put out so much music since the pandemic, all which sold like crazy, so why bother touring. Oh and she too has a new release on the horizon – her own re-recording of her second album Fearless, rumored to include unreleased songs. Coincidentally, there are unreleased Taylor Swift songs all over YouTube right now that are staying up, so maybe that’s Taylor herself leaking the old unreleased tracks to build hype. I mean it’s very un-Taylor-Swift-like to leave anything up, like anything at all.

As for me and my thoughts on the new songs, I haven’t gotten to really consider much of them. I have listened to the first Alice Cooper song, which is not bad. And I had a chance to play through the album by The Pretty Reckless. I suppose I’ll do a proper review of it, maybe next week.

But what is in my head – and really no matter what I intend to write about when I sit down to write these stories they always turn into whatever is in my head at the moment  – is what’s next in my life. And what I really, really want to do, and how to get there.

There was a joke to me on the last story. I said I would like a kitchen like the Nashville house that Greta Van Fleet is in – the venue for their little joking video of themselves making margaritas; the response: that I need to practice guitar more. No doubt! No doubt, not to pay for any house like that, I’m way past the expiration date of any ability for guitar to do that for me, but just to play, just to have the mental calmness to play would be good. My response was a recitation of all the things I would want to do.

They say if you “put it out there”, manifest your thoughts into words, those thoughts will come true. A young skater I once knew told me to write down my dream and put the paper into a little box and keep the box like it’s precious. Twelve-years-old she was. Her paper said one word: Olympics. Mine would say simply: calm. Because everything I want to do revolves around, or evolves from, the state of being calm.

I’m trying. I’ve done a few things this week that are calming to me. I’ve watched so much skating that pretty much nothing else, well other than stupid pet videos, is coming up in my YouTube suggestions other than skating. And by skating I am referring to beautifully-filmed videos of what is basically skating edges, all done outside. One of those videos this week was of a woman skating to a song from Lana Del Rey’s last album, Norman Fucking Rockwell, an album that I never really gave a chance. The song in the skating video though, was really nice as an accompaniment to that skating.

Yesterday, I cleaned my kitchen, the refrigerator, and cooked. That entire time I let YouTube do its thing, playing one Lana Del Rey song after the next, the first time I’ve really listened to a lot of Lana in months.

I started by playing the song Ride, which I played twice. Why? For two reasons. One, I play that song myself, meaning I play and sing it on guitar, kind of a country version. Or I did, before the frenzy that took over my brain. Two, the news on Lana this week is that her some-delayed album (which was going to be called White-Hot Forever, but after BLM [and the meaning that’s not Bureau of Land Management, which it means to me] was changed to Chemtrails Over the Country-Club) will be released this month. March 16, I think is the release date. In recent interviews though, Lana didn’t say too much about the album. Instead, she said she has recorded an entire album of country covers. She said Ride and Video Games are basically country. Elaborating, she they definitely aren’t pop, and could be country with different production. Hence, I played Ride two times to decide if her version is country. I know mine is. But I wondered about Lana’s reasons for wanting to record country. Here’s my take.

All throughout the summer she took a great deal of heat. She would post things in social media, who even cares what, but from those posts people accused her of being a racist, at worst, insensitive at best. She took to the roads too. One time she posted that she was on I-40, eight hours away from Los Angeles. From experience that puts her at about Holbrook or Winslow, Arizona, not quite to Flagstaff. One time she was in Oklahoma getting her hair done. Now that sounds about like me – drive across the country to get my hair done. Okay, for me, it’s teeth cleaning; I only trust this place in Dallas, but it’s kind of the same. She has a pickup too; driving across the West in a truck. Yep. I can relate. There have been stories of her buying cowboy boots in New Mexico and Texas, store owners thrilled at their guest. I’ve read other stories about how she takes “lessons”. For those, she says, she’s just Elizabeth Grant, her actual real name. The teachers treat her like a real person. I forget what she says about the lessons, but my impression was that she does these things because it freeing. The lessons? Flying, and sailing. Seriously? This woman took the “dreams” page out of my figurative little box (you know the box the 12-year-old suggested I make) and lives it.

I’m really far away from flying lessons or even sailing lessons for that matter. But I do know why one drives across the west. It’s amazing. It’s challenging too. Physically, mentally; it takes a lot to do it and to actually get somewhere in a reasonable time. And it’s real. The people are really real. Perhaps it’s a good escape from the demands of PC culture, especially when whatever you tweet makes you a target.

As for the country music, I wonder. I wonder if Lana’s reasoning isn’t the very reaction she got from her off-the-cuff remarks that are getting her into hot water. The latest….

After the January 6 insurgency-riot, she said in some interview that Donald Trump should get the benefit of the doubt. Honestly, I should look up the quote exactly, but after that she had to explain it away, and just like the earlier statements, she dug herself in deeper in the view of public opinion. With country music, I think these problems she’s making for herself wouldn’t be there. So maybe that’s why she recorded the country album. That and driving on the I-40 just lends itself to country music.

Plus I wonder if she’s in a fenzy, like me. Perhaps. Perhaps she made such a mess of things, now getting headlines like Why People are Turning on Lana Del Rey, there really is such an article, that she would completely change.

That and go skating.

Figure skating.

I’ve seen photos of a Lana as a girl in figure skates. I think she skated at a similar level as I did. And that feeling, that feeling is a physical need. I know when I am in a frenzy, the very best thing to get me out of it is to skate. But rinks aren’t open. It’s the one thing I want to do.

I imagine she could pay to open a rink and skate. Me? If only…

Or maybe not. Maybe she found the way around even closed ice rinks. The teases for her new song, White Dress, to be on the anticipated album, feature Lana skating in the rural areas outside Los Angeles. Perhaps she goes there too, rural Los Angeles, just as I do. The teaser video got me super curious, not for the song, for the skates.

She’s wearing inline roller skates, not figure skates, but the blade looks just like figure skates. I’ve frozen the video to the frame with the skates to try to find what they are. I think they are Edea, the most-worn brand for figure skates right now. I have Edea boots for ice. I did some research and found there’s a roller-blade that feels figure-skate-like that are put on Edea boots. The difference is the blade-wheels I found seem to have three wheels, and Lana’s have four. Now I want those – Edea figure roller skates. They seem to start just shy of $600, so yet another … if only.

While I’m at it, I know I’m a whole-bunch of years older than Lana, and it’s not likely that she would want to be my friend, and I don’t want to sound like a crazy-stalker fan, but seriously, this woman’s taste in things is exactly mine: flying, sailing, driving across the 40, cowboy boots, trucks, the rural areas of Los Angeles, figure skating, and now country music. Of course, she can actually do all of it and I’m stuck saying … if only.

In the meantime, I already do have some pretty cool cowboy boots, vintage even, because I am vintage; I’m not new to country music or to trucks or to driving on I-40. I will, someday, learn to fly. And I’m going to put little bits of money into a box (my actual version of the 12-year-old box) until I get to $600 for some Edea, inline roller figure skates. And I really do need to get out my guitar. Because she is right. Ride makes a good country song. Like I said, my version has been country since I made it that way. I will say if only for her country album though. I know we’ll get Chemtrails Over the Country-Club, and how great that it comes this month, new Lana is always good for me, but I have a feeling the label won’t release the country songs. I would really like to hear it.

Seriously though, the next thing I read about Lana will be that she has adopted a BLM (the correct meaning) Mustang or bought a tractor. I just know it. Honestly though, someday, while skating on a rural road in my Edea roller-figure skates I’m going to save for, I might just run into her. My rural road is really pretty, Lana, and you can use it for a video. Be sure to bring your cowboy boots (the bushes are sticker-y) and your truck.