Time: 10:30 a.m.
Date: 4 December 2022
Place: Quest Wodonga, 46 Reid St, Wodonga VIC 3690.
Now here you go again, you say you want your freedom
Well, who am I to keep you down?
It’s only right that you should play the way you feel it
But listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness
Like a heartbeat, drives you mad
In the stillness of remembering what you had
And what you lost
And what you had
And what you lost…When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know
You’ll know
You will know
Oh-oh-oh, you’ll know.
Dreams. Stevie Nicks.
I am reminded of the recent passing of Christine McVie (1943-2022). Fleetwood Mac was the music of a generation to which Ruth, and I were apart, born 1961. I recall that on the personal “Edge of Seventeen”, walking into a Baptist Church Hall and hearing Fleetwood Mac for the first time. I turned to a slightly older and prettier girl and asked, “What is that music?”. I was enthralled, and have been ever since. I wonder what happened to that woman. She was a daughter of a fundamentalist Christian preacher, and if most of the generation did not give up faith, they gave up that deadening belief system for the new culture of life.
The songs of Fleetwood Mac are about the angst of human relations, and, in particular, gender-sexual coupling. I made the point in another post that the closing panel at the Congress of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS), on Friday, was more honest to the angst that is experienced by practitioners than what was said in an earlier HASS panel which was a sales pitch for the Arts. There are too many shallow thinkers in our profession, industry, and communities. You have those who say they want their freedom, very loudly and aggressively, but listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness.
I know loneliness, here writing in Room 103B in Wodonga. Travelling this country alone, without Ruth. It breaks my heart. “Oh-oh-oh, you’ll know.”
I thought I could cry no more. But tears are rolling down my cheek. SBS Chill music playing. A memory of our wedding anniversary in a historic cottage, hidden in the hills of the D’Aguilar. In the middle of nowhere. This blog is for you, Ruth. I love you. You did say to me, “Oh-oh-oh, you’ll know.”
Image: Ruth at Mt Buller in 2007. On my drive up to Wodonga, yesterday, I passed the road to Mount Buller; a place where we, the family, once lived life. Ruth died six years ago on 17 December 2016.
Fleetwood Mac – Dreams, released in 1977. This is no doubt the music I heard walking into that Baptist Church Hall, on that lonely Friday night in 1977.
Neville Buch