Stevie Nicks "Landslide" Brings Me Down...

A slow, dismal, and rainy shift for Lovely Ouray's Gallery Boy yesterday. Is there such a thing as "too much time to think?" If there is it surely accounts for my emotional hangover today. It might have been the steamy banks of clouds, draped and pawing over our mountains like some love-sick teeny bobber. Or maybe it was the lazy clock or that I had no one to talk too… no one to reroute my usual course when damp, chilly weather portends the final curtain is coming down on the last act of our Rocky Mountain summer theater (sniff). 


Or maybe (probably) it was the mistake of watching Stevie Nicks' Landslide video… with those haunting lyrics and melody, her haunting baritone vibrato, and sad brown eyes. There's something in the way she looks at Lindsey Buckingham, the way he looks at her—the long embrace at the end—that seems to belie their tangled romantic history, one that started in high school. Now, in their middle sixties—my age—they occasionally regroup and perform, love and respect in their eyes, but no longer "a couple." Regardless, they still "make love" on stage—Lindsey with his consummate guitar licks, Stevie with her haunting voice. There is little doubt about the metaphorical implications in Stevie's "Landslide" lyrics. Fleetwood Mac had its share of band "incest," marriages, divorces, remarriage and the usual hotel room roulette. To be sure, much heartache had to be "swallowed" for "Mac" to stay together as long as they did. That "Landslide" was written in the early 70's suggests Nicks is remarkably clairvoyant, as well as a cerebral lyricist, gifted singer, and mystical performer. 

I took my love and I took it down

Climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
Till the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
And can I sail through the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
Oh oh I don't know, oh I don't know

Well, I've been afraid of changing
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Children get older I'm getting older too
Yes I'm getting older too, so

I've been afraid of changing
'Cause I, I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Children get older
I'm getting older too oh yes
I'm getting older too

So, take this love, take it down
Oh if you climb a mountain and you turn around
If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well the landslide will bring you down, down
And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills

Well maybe the landslide will bring you down
Well well, the landslide will bring you down

Lately, "I'm getting older too" carries more significance…more implications for this aging groupie. I, too, "have seen my reflection in those snow covered hills," and barring Copyright infringement it will be my epitaph. Certain songs out of the past, Landslide among many, cause me to reflect on the "train-wrecks" of love and life, loss of youth and innocence, not to mention, impulsive choices made.  

Sometimes weather and mood and "other variables  conspire to set me up, and all it takes is the right song, which is to say, the wrong song, to open the "faucet." 

Fortunately it was raining. I stepped outside, looked up, and let a dismal drizzle wash away the evidence. 

Oh if you climb a mountain and you turn around
If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills

Well the landslide will bring you down 

Well the landslide will bring you down

"Landslide"


Last week we went to Ridgway to take a walk and have breakfast at Kates with Judy, a former neighbor. 

I drug out the paints again. Rusty, but here's the "Cimarron Mountains," for better or worse.