Songs for a Solitary Sunday
Such as it is, it is.
I don’t know how many of you are familiar with firearms, or have had the experience of firing a weapon yourself or hearing one fired, but I lived in Wisconsin for a long time and I did some hunting while I was in high school and early college, before I put down the weapons for good. The reason I put down the weapons was simple. There was more power in the guns than I wanted. While it was cool when I was 16 to run around the forest plinking squirrels and deer, and chasing pheasants through cornfields, there was something terrible about it. If you’ve not fired a gun, I want to put it in perspective for you.
I was 15. I had just gotten my own gun for my birthday. It’s a .270, pump-action rifle. Relatively speaking, it’s a small rifle, the smallest allowed for hunting big game like deer. It’s still plenty big enough to kill anything you’d want to put down, smaller than a cow or a bear or something, and two shots from a .270 would still both both of those down easily, no matter where you hit it. I was standing on top of a hill, while the other guys I was hunting with here walking through the forest below, trying to drive the deer to run out of the forest. I’ve got my firing zone figured out…where I can shoot and where I can not shoot, so as to avoid shooting one of the people I was hunting with. (Always desirable.) A group of four deer runs out, and myself and the other three guys on the top of the hill start firing with me. I was mechanical. I snapped off three shots, clicking the trigger, peppering the deer with shrapnel. As I pulled the trigger the first time at the one I was aiming at, I got ticked off, because it fell as I was pulling the trigger. I figured someone else must have hit it. I work the action and fire a couple more times, instantly throwing up gravel 300 yards away. After the smoke and noise had cleared, there was this empty silence. It was eerie. After the cacophony of gunshots, a surreal silence settled over the armed battery on the top of the hill. We all looked at each other. It took us a couple of second to speak. We consulted, and the deer that had fallen, was my shot. I hadn’t even finished pulling the trigger when it fell. And just like that, it was dead. The power to kill without even finishing the motion at 300 yards was more power than I ever wanted to wield again. I put down the rifle, and that was it for me. I don’t want killing power at 300 yards. That’s too much power for me, and it was too much power to just mechanically be throwing out shots like it was no big deal.
But it was the silence that shocked me. For 30 seconds, it was frantic, the boom of the shots coming one after another, the shrapnel instantly hitting the gravel far away. The silence. Complete. Total. Uncomfortable.
Very similar to how I feel today. So in honor of the silence, I’d like to suggest to you some music to fill it, on this solitary, silent Sunday. With apologies to the Beastie Boys, here we go.
1. (The Entire) Room for Squares album, John Mayer.
2. Extreme Ways, Moby.
3. Dream On, Aerosmith.
4. Solsbury Hill, Peter Gabriel.
5. Mourning, Tantric
6. The Moment, Trans-Siberian Orchestra
7. Abba (Father), Rebecca St. James
8. Dream Lover, Mariah Carey
9. The End of Innocense, Don Henley
10. Carry On Wayward Son, Kansas
11. Roll Me Away, Bob Seger
12. Sweet Surrender, Sarah McLachlan
13. Hey Girl, O.A.R.
14. The Entire Prince of Egypt Soundtrack
15. The Measure of a Man, 4 Him.
16. Mysterious Ways, U2
17. Flake, Jack Johnson.
18. Carolina Line, Silers Bald
19. Dandy Life, Collective Soul
20. I’ve Changed, Josh Joplin Group
*ahem*
Back to the Greek. Have a good week folks, if I don’t get back here to write.