Hump Day Hook - 12 December

There is always one album that seems to define a generation.  I grew up during the ‘80s, a time that became a decade of upheaval in many aspects of the world, from politics to fashion.  I am happy that I grew up during this period, but I guess everyone says that about the time they lived.

Music was so radically different from what had come before in the 50’s, 60’s and even 70’s.  Though women had began to burn their bras in the sixties I think the true change of women’s attitudes really began in the eighties.  I remember watching MTV and seeing the first video ever aired on it, and I remember seeing Madonna and thinking “She’ll never last.”

Ha!  Good thing I’m not a betting person! 

One album stood out to me, bringing to light all that I was afraid of during the political turmoil of the fall of the Soviet Union to the unification of Germany.  I’m glad that I lived through such times, lived through a lot of history that my child will one day only read about.  That album was “The Dream of the Blue Turtles” by Sting.  Published in 1985, it became my anthem of unease in a world bordering on destruction.  Of course, the world once again feels like it’s bordering on destruction so I popped in the cd the other day and listened to the songs.  You can basically take the lyrics of “Russians” and substitute “Iraians” or “North Koreans” and the song becomes instantly another cry of hope.

For this weeks Hump Day Hook, I decided to post a paragraph from my book Kismet. This book is the sequel (of sorts) to Spirals, set at the same time but with different characters.  Evie is a woman who travels around helping people because she gets visions, and her visions have led her to LA.  I could never fully comprehend what it must have felt like to live in a country that was suddenly torn apart, but in the words of Sting: We share the same biology, regardless of ideology.

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Shalana leads us all around her “city,” listening, asking questions, and inviting people into the discussion. I can see the resentment of our being there in some faces, happiness and relief in others, and I wonder what I would have done had I lived here in Los Angeles when the earthquake had hit. If I had survived it, that is. Would I have huddled together as these people had done or would I be the person I am today, standing on my own two feet and surviving on my own? I figure it would take a strong person to do exactly that. I could have stayed in Georgia, or returned to Louisiana and joined a family community, surviving, but my visions have given me the drive to find more, be more, so my nomadic existence has made me stronger. Or so I like to think.

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