The Gift, Part 2
In yesterday’s essay, The Gift, I talked about a two-CD set containing multiple versions of House of the Rising Sun. In the afternoon, I talked with the gift’s creator. The date of the creation came up. I said the files on the CDs I have are dated 1994. This puzzled him because his trip to California was in 2000. That actually makes more sense because Napster started in 1999, and that was the event that showed everyone how portable music could be, to the detriment of a lot of musicians.
We puzzled a bit over the digital date on the files, 12/31/1994, however, because as a computer nerd he’s fairly fastidious about that sort of thing. We didn’t come to any conclusion except that neither of us could even remember where we were living in 1994. I guess we’re just two old men lost in their fuzzy past. That’s okay. I think it might be a burden to have a lot of precise dates and times banging around in my head. I believe I prefer the more imprecise approach of lumping decades together and thinking, yeah, I felt good then in a general sense.
It helps ameliorate the pains I might have encountered along the way, like the time I lost my job, or had a big fight with someone, or well take your pick. Life is full of hurts and disappointments and being able to mull over the details of every single one might be counterproductive. It sounds a little trite, but there’s a lot more light on the bright side of things and that’s why I like looking at it. It doesn’t stop me from falling into the dumps, but at least its there to show me the way out. I believe that’s a good thing, although it might be nice to remember off the top of my head where we lived in 1994.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale