There's a world where I can go and tell my secrets to (The Beach Boys)

Wie geht's?

I'm enjoying this weighty tome, and I mean weighty - feels like it's about 7kg. 

I love The Beach Boys' music and I love California (the actual place and the mythic place of eternal youth and endless summer). The two go hand in glove.

Jacky and I have loved our Californian adventures with Samantha; traveling the Pacific Coast Highway between Monterey and LA.

Heading up the coast last time was during a freak storm - lots of rain and rocks hitting Fanfa's car in dramatic fashion. That was very unlike the sunshine of our first trip down the 101 from San Francisco.

Have you ever been south of Monterey?
Barrancas carve the coastline
And the chaparral flows to the sea
'Neath waves of golden sunshine
And have you ever been north of Morro Bay?
The south coast plows the sea... 

(From California Saga by The Beach Boys)

The Beach Boys book is made up of pictures and interviews with the key players and they are clear about the mythic California created by Brian Wilson and his lyrical collaborators in their songs. But it's not like mythic California didn't exist before the Beach Boys sang about surfing and cruising in cars. Like the Okies trying to escape the dust bowl, that mythic ideal has lured the people for a long time.

Travelling that coastline (and those falling rocks reminded me) is important for the soul. From time to time, it's great to reconnect with important stuff and realise how insignificant we are.

As The Beach Boys' California Saga reminds us - the eagles continue through their generations and the land endures (and puts up with us) but 'The world has changed in [the she-eagle's] time; humanity has multiplied, but not here'.

Getting a glimpse of that from time to time is good for me. That's partly why I'm drawn towards the Pacific Coastal Highway and those California myths. 

As Rumi says: When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

And after all, the best coffee and donuts on the planet are at Big Sur.

Fun, fun, fun. Love and peace - Wozza

I'm thinking about a-this whole world (The Beach Boys)

I am Brian Wilson. 

Well, actually, I am Warren Purdy but the 'I am Sparticus' joke I tried to weave in there didn't want to work.

I've just finished I Am Brian Wilson (start of week 39, book 42) and it's a really good title. I feel like I know him a little more than I did before.

That's a pretty cool thing to say about someone's autobiography.

The Beach Boys have long been an obsession - I own all their albums, even the pretty duff ones with Mike Love 'leading' the lineup like Still Cruisin' and Summer In Paradise. I'm not sure why I own those ones. I'm not a fan of Mike Love.

But I love Carl Wilson, Brian's music, and I love the idea of Dennis Wilson. Given there is a lot of stuff about Brian in the public arena, I have never really thought much about Brian Wilson the person. 

Until I Am Brian Wilson.

I have no idea how it was written but the whole thing sounds like Brian. And Brian is very candid about his voices, his relationships, and his music.

It's real, is what I'm trying to say. And real is rare.

Love and peace to you Brian - WNP

Fantasy world and Disney girls I'm coming back (The Beach Boys)

Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically it's a longing for a period or place with happy personal associations. 

The word nostalgia is from Greek, consisting of nóstos meaning "homecoming", and álgos, meaning "pain, ache". It was coined to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home. 

All together it forms a peculiar brand of melancholy.

The Guardian Weekly I bought recently had an interesting article on nostalgia being used as a therapy treatment for depression.

Interesting, because nostalgia is often thought of as a medical condition. Although it is often triggered by negative feelings, it can also result in increasing one's mood and heightening positive emotions.

Quite a complicated little beastie!

Recently, I thought about all this while listening to a CD I bought at JB HiFi: The Beach Boys Live 50th Anniversary Tour.

The songs are all there, and although Carl and Dennis Wilson are long gone, the voices are pretty much all there too (aside from Mike Love's - he seems to have suffered the ravages of time much more than Brian Wilson).

The whole tour is of course a nostagic exercise for the remaining Beach Boys AND the audience - reliving those songs from 50 years ago about surfing, life at school and hotrods must be a real strain.

I was kinda reflecting on that in a general way and then I got to Bruce Johnston's awesome Disney Girls.

Curiously, this song makes me melt every time!

My reflections on nostagia became suddenly clear at this point as I luxuriated in the warm glow of remembering hearing this song in 1971 and entered Bruce's American youth by proxy. This song is all about a nostalgic transportation to a fantasy world.

The boys (ha ha ha in a way, but they'll forever be remembered that way) do a good job of Disney Girls on their 50th Anniversary tour but for the real deal you need to hear the version off the Surf's Up album. Here it is and see if I ain't right!


Funny how those images evoke such emotional connections. Funnier still that they resonate with me given I was brought up in a 1960's New Zealand that knew nothing about Tootsie Rolls, Patti Page or summer days on old Cape Cod.

Ah but a fantasy world? Yeah I know about that.

Love and peace - Wozza