May 12, 2019 – Good news! My written summary and photos of the work I did (with help from my family) satisfied the insurance company. They say there is no need for a further inspection of my home. Good thing, because I haven’t finished painting the porch, the foundation skirt and some of the really tall rafters. The insurance company’s letter is making me sleep much easier though. And with that, I have a renewed desire to participate in such things as music, influences and writing. Okay, almost on the writing, but I’ll give it a try.

I’ve been very busy, but still, I’m finding I’m seeing influences. All of those, even though they are drastically different, point to one thing.

I’m super into Game of Thrones. I’ve watched it in real-time ever since a friend introduced it to me in its third season. The characters are like actual people to me. The dragons too. I was that way with Gossip Girl too, but really only those two shows, ever. Everything else I watch, I watch knowing it’s a story. I even have trouble divorcing the persona of the actors from the character – that’s Ann Hathaway playing that; that’s Ryan Gosling playing that. And forget the older actors. I simply cannot watch Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, any Baldwin, Nick Cage, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, any of those, and really believe the character. Perhaps that’s why Game of Thrones is so special to me. I get completely lost in it. The second week into this season – the battle against the Night King — my heart was racing so fast I had to take deep breaths to calm down, worried that my favorites would die. Daenerys (she’s the one with the dragons), Arya, and Sansa. Brienne of Tarth too. Those are my favorites. I’m sure it’s designed that way – strong girls/women for a partly female audience.

I’ve read articles and watched videos on Game of Thrones so much that my YouTube suggestions have almost completely obliterated music suggestions. Except for the Roth Show; YouTube still suggests each of those as they come out; probably because I’m watching them. They are good, by the way; Dave is very calm in them, and he’s telling funny stories. He did an entire three-party video of stories of him falling off motorcycles while trying to be cool as a tribute to one of his employees who got injured in a motorcycle accident; that was really nice.

I can’t exactly make a music article about Game of Thrones, and I’m not going to, except to say that Taylor Swift seems to be a fan too. I’m not sure if she’s watching video after video of fan theories (none of which have any time to come true with only two episodes left) like I am. I’m not sure if she agrees with me that the season has been impossibly and unconvincingly rushed. But what she says is that Game of Thrones, in fact the characters I mention with the exception of Brienne, influenced her. She said they influenced certain songs on her last album. I won’t say how because you have to know too much about both the Taylor Swift songs and those story-lines of those characters. But Taylor Swift went on to say something that’s been in the back of my mind about Game of Thrones since I started watching, and that is the writing is brilliant in its references. The story gives hints of things to come. Prophecies. Foreshadowing. Easter eggs, in that modern-day vernacular I don’t seem to be able to shake.

I watched the movie The Dirt this week as well. As you all know, it’s the story of Motley Crue’s formation and early rise to fame. It was fascinating, if only as the juxtaposition of my visual and story input as contrasted to Game of Thrones.

Game of Thrones contains an enormous amount of sex, a lot of it not in any way beautiful. The Dirt contained an enormous amount of sex too, none of it in any way beautiful. But I came out my viewing of The Dirt feeling nothing but sad, sad that the story of these guys was seemingly based solely around sex, again, none of it in any way beautiful.

Mind you sex is not bad. I’m not saying that. Not at all. If I thought that I could never in a million years watch Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones is terrible at times, literally terrible on that front. But it what it does, outside of the Easter eggs, or perhaps through them, is to give the terrible meaning. There is little definitive good, little definitive bad, just a mixture of both. Meaning.

I don’t know Motley Crue’s songs well enough to sing along. Some of them, sure, but I couldn’t sing the deep cuts. Again, don’t get me wrong; I absolutely love Motely Crue songs. I even liked the movie from the standpoint of their music, and from the standpoint of their band comaraderie (not that I believed that part). I liked the story of redemption out of addiction (although I found myself angry that anyone with the fast success they had could let themselves go down that path, Nikki Sixx, I’m talking to you). I really liked the references to David Lee Roth (although not so much the portrayal of him all coked out on their sofa). But I was left with this overwhelming thought that the movie could have had more meaning.

Not that I want to, but I’m going to bring this back to Taylor Swift. Sorry to mention her again when I left that story featuring her for two weeks. The promotion around her current song continues with yet more hints – this time Taylor wearing a jean jacket with pins of things she likes. The Game of Thrones girlies – Daenerys, Sansa and Arya – make an appearance in pin form, so do the characters of Friends. Her cats make an appearance. The word “Calm” is there in pin form; my last story mentioned she was trying to hint about her album title; that could be it. Other musicians make an appearance, again with the Dixie Chicks. She adds Drake and some musicians I don’t know. One article I saw said one of the pins was Lana Del Rey, although I don’t see Lana’s photo in the pins. But Taylor is talking a lot about Lana and about how much she respects Lana’s song writing for having meaning. Another article said Taylor wanted to evoke an emotional journey on this upcoming record — happy-highs and really, really sad songs, although not so sad we have to worry about her. She’s trying for a singer-songwriter vibe, and I suppose, her version of meaning. Something Lana-like.

I don’t want to disparage The Dirt. I don’t want to disparage rock music. Because I love it. I love it a lot. But I have to say, the things that really keep me, the things that hook me for the many years that Game of Thrones has hooked me, in fact how Lana Del Rey hooked me, are multi-faceted. Sure I love the flashy guitars. Humm, perhaps they are sex even, and I’m all for it, but can it also have something more? Can it have meaning? Good. Bad. Both. Because without conveying a meaning, what’s the point?

Time to watch a Motely Crue lyric video and see what I think. Is there meaning in the songs that the movie could have portrayed?