What I feel, I can’t say

I was assaulted early this morning by one of those inane Facebook chain-letter things that ask you to respond and then pass the virus along to a handful of other innocent people. But unlike some such activities that want you to reveal embarrassing facts about yourself, this one was relatively mild.

Rules are:
1. Post the cover of a great album.
2. No need to go into why it’s a great album. Just accept it is.
3. Nominate 4 mates.
4. Tag the person who nominated you.
5. Keep it going.

Well, that seemed simple enough, and despite the fact that it was 4 o’clock in the morning, I thought to myself, “Sure, why the hell not?”

I called up iTunes on my laptop and started perusing all the great music I have there. I thought maybe something by Led Zeppelin. I’d destroyed my ears back in college listening over and over to Physical Graffiti, but no, for this exercise, it just didn’t seem right.

How about Hunky Dory, my favorite album by the great David Bowie. I’ve given that album a lot of play time ever since the singer’s recent death, but sadly, I didn’t become a Bowie fan until relatively late in life, so no, I felt I should keep looking.

Finally I hit upon All Things Must Pass by George Harrison. There’s not a bad tune on that epic three-record set, and every time I play it, the music transports me back through time. Many of these great songs were playing over the car radio during my high school days, even though when the album debuted in 1970, I still had a couple years to go before getting my drivers license. Crazily enough, I have a vivid memory of My Sweet Lord playing while I drove to a bowling alley with a buddy of mine during one hot summer day in San Antonio:

Hm, my lord (hallelujah)
My, my, my lord (hare krishna)
My sweet lord (hare krishna)
My sweet lord (krishna krishna)
My lord (hare hare)
Hm, hm (Gurur Brahma)
Hm, hm (Gurur Vishnu)
Hm, hm (Gurur Devo)
Hm, hm (Maheshwara)
My sweet lord (Gurur Sakshaat)
My sweet lord (Parabrahma)
My, my, my lord (Tasmayi Shree)
My, my, my, my lord (Guruve Namah)
My sweet lord (Hare Rama)

Hare krishna? I’d sure never heard anything like it before, not in the Bible Belt of South Texas in the 1970s! But my how those words stuck, even though I wasn’t quite sure what any of them meant. But one thing for sure, that song forever changed the way I think about bowling.

So yes, definitely, All Things Must Pass would be my choice for Facebook. I followed the instructions and posted the album art to my feed, nominated four different suckers, then went about my day.

Of course I’ve seen the album art before, many times in fact, but now that I’m back home and have settled down to the beauty of Run of the Mill as it flows through thin wires, past my ears and into my consciousness, I look again at the picture of George, seated on a stool at his Friar Park estate, surrounded by gnomes.

Gnomes!

You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want, but I promise you I didn’t plan it this way. This morning I was thinking only of my love for All Things Must Pass, which has been part of my collection for many, many years. But looking now at those garden gnomes, could it be that they subliminally influenced my choice?

Or maybe it’s somehow deeper than that. Could it be that because of this album, I was destined from long ago to write a world-famous gnome blog?

George was famously reserved, but I can almost imagine his answer to my question: “Yes, Isn’t It A Pity.”