Memory Concert Quotes

And I still have other smothered memories, now unfolding themselves into limbless monsters of pain. Once, in a sunset-ending street of Beardsley, she turned to little Eva Rosen (I was taking both nymphets to a concert and walking behind them so close as almost to touch them with my person), she turned to Eva, and so very serenely and seriously, in answer to something the other had said about its being better to die than hear Milton Pinski; some local schoolboy she knew, talk about music, my Lolita remarked: 'You know what's so dreadful about dying is that you're completely on your own'; and it struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my darling's mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile cliches, there was in her a garden and a twilight, and a palace gate - dim and adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely forbidden to me, in my polluted rags and miserable convulsions...

I missed her so much that I wanted to build a hundred-foot memorial to her with my bare hands. I wanted to see her sitting in a vast stone chair in Hyde Park, enjoying her view. Everybody passing could comprehend how much I miss her. How physical my missing is. I miss her so much it is a vast golden prince, a concert hall, a thousand trees, a lake, nine thousand buses, a million cars, twenty million birds and more. The whole city is my missing her. Eugh,

Your youth is the most important thing you will ever have. It's when you will connect to music like a primal urge, and the memories attached to the songs will never leave you. Please hold on to everything. Keep every note, mix tape, concert ticket stub, and memory you have of music from your youth. It'll be the one thing that might keep you young, even if you aren't anymore.

You are not who you think you are. You are not your fears, your thoughts, or your body. You are not your insecurities, your career, or your memories. You're not what you're criticized for and you're not what you're praised for. You are a boundless wealth of potential. You are everything that's ever been. Don't sell yourself short. Every sunset, every mountain, every river, every passionate crowd, every concert, every drop of rain - that's you. So go find yourself. Go find your strength, find your beauty, find your purpose. Stop crafting your mask. Stop hiding. Stop lying to yourself and letting people lie to you. You're not lacking in anything except awareness. Everything you've ever wanted is already there, awaiting your attention, awaiting your time.

We, however, have all kinds of different ideas about what happiness is. Some must go bungee jumping to experience a rush of joy, while others find bliss staying home. Some are happy in a concert hall, listening to classical music, while children on a playground could be music to the ears of others. Some people experience elation when they solve a complicated equation, while for others a cancelled math class is a happy childhood memory.

She looks at her wrist, those thin scars like an entry stamp for some horrible concert. 'All the shitty stuff people do to themselves... it can all be the same thing, you know? Just a way to drown out your own voice. To kill your memories without having to kill yourself.

Less is having a memory from nearly thirty years before: walking out of an Erasure concert with his friend, stoned, learning that the Democrats had retaken the Senate, and walking into this bar and declaring: “We want to sleep with a Republican! Who’s a Republican?” And every man in the place raising his hand.

Music, I regret to say, affects me merely as an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds. Under certain emotional circumstances I can stand the spasms of a rich violin, but the concert piano and all wind instruments bore me in small doses and flay me in larger ones.

It tugs at me, filling me with the kind of seasick nostalgia that can hit you in the gut when you find an old concert ticket in your purse or an old coin machine ring you got down at the boardwalk on a day when you went searching for mermaids in the surf with your best friend. That punch of nostalgia hits me now and I start to sink down on the sky-coloured quilt, feeling the nubby fabric under my fingers, familiar as the topography of my hand.

It’s about growth versus decay, activity versus inactivity. The body was designed to be pushed, and in pushing our bodies we push our brains too. Learning and memory evolved in concert with the motor functions that allowed our ancestors to track down food, so as far as our brains are concerned, if we’re not moving, there’s no real need to learn anything.

Yes, Virginia, I guess I am older that dirt. 1966 was almost a half a century ago. The funny thing is - The Monkees are still part of my life. Who would have thought that, 40 or 45 years ago. Who would have thought I'd see them in concert in both 1986 and after the turn of the century. They've given us 50 years of comedy, music, and memories. Maybe the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame should consider immortalizing guys like that.

I wish I hadn't met you in the rain: it comes every winter. I wish you hadn't told me your favorite wine: I've become a drinker. I wish I never showed you my hidden birthmark: It looks back at me at night asking where you are. I wish I hadn't read you my journal, all the pages praising you, It's corrupted now that I can't tell if I write for me or you. I wish I hadn't told you my daily routine: it's not mine anymore. I can't enjoy 11:11, my favorite song, a birthday cake, or a concert tour. I'm not afraid of the future, it's the past that takes a while.

I missed her so much that I wanted to build a hundred-foot memorial to her with my bare hands. I wanted to see her sitting in a vast stone chair in Hyde Park, enjoying her view. Everybody passing could comprehend how much I miss her. How physical my missing is. I miss her so much it is a vast golden prince, a concert hall, a thousand trees, a lake, nine thousand buses, a million cars, twenty million birds and more. The whole city is my missing her.

Both incest and the Holocaust have been subject to furious denial by perpetrators and other individuals and by highly organised groups such as the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and the Committee for Historical Review. Incest and the Holocaust are vulnerable to this kind of concerted denial because of their unfathomability, the unjustifiability, and the threat they pose to the politics of patriarchy and anti-Semitism respectively. Over and over, survivors of the Holocaust attest that they were warned of what was happening in Poland but could not believe it at the time, could not believe it later as it was happening to them, and still to this day cannot believe what they, at the same time, know to have occurred. For Holocaust deniers this is a felicitous twist, for their arguments denying the Holocaust and therefore the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state capitalize on the discrepancies of faded memory. In the case of incest, although post-traumatic stress disorder, amnesia, and dissociation represent some of the mind's strategies for comprehending the incomprehensible, incest deniers have taken advantage of inconsistencies to discredit survivor testimony.

Fame requires every kind of excess. I mean true fame, a devouring neon, not the somber renown of waning statesmen or chinless kings. I mean long journeys across gray space. I mean danger, the edge of every void, the circumstance of one man imparting an erotic terror to the dreams of the republic. Understand the man who must inhabit these extreme regions, monstrous and vulval, damp with memories of violation. Even if half-mad he is absorbed into the public's total madness; even if fully rational, a bureaucrat in hell, a secret genius of survival, he is sure to be destroyed by the public's contempt for survivors. Fame, this special kind, feeds itself on outrage, on what the counselors of lesser men would consider bad publicity-hysteria in limousines, knife fights in the audience, bizarre litigation, treachery, pandemonium and drugs. Perhaps the only natural law attaching to true fame is that the famous man is compelled, eventually, to commit suicide. (Is it clear I was a hero of rock'n'roll?) Toward the end of the final tour it became apparent that our audience wanted more than music, more even than its own reduplicated noise. It's possible the culture had reached its limit, a point of severe tension. There was less sense of simple visceral abandon at our concerts during these last weeks. Few cases of arson and vandalism. Fewer still of rape. No smoke bombs or threats of worse explosives. Our followers, in their isolation, were not concerned with precedent now. They were free of old saints and martyrs, but fearfully so, left with their own unlabeled flesh. Those without tickets didn't storm the barricades, and during a performance the boys and girls directly below us, scratching at the stage, were less murderous in their love of me, as if realizing finally that my death, to be authentic, must be self-willed- a succesful piece of instruction only if it occured by my own hand, preferrably ina foreign city. I began to think their education would not be complete until they outdid me as a teacher, until one day they merely pantomimed the kind of massive response the group was used to getting. As we performed they would dance, collapse, clutch each other, wave their arms, all the while making absolutely no sound. We would stand in the incandescent pit of a huge stadium filled with wildly rippling bodies, all totally silent. Our recent music, deprived of people's screams, was next to meaningless, and there would have been no choice but to stop playing. A profound joke it would have been. A lesson in something or other. In Houston I left the group, saying nothing, and boarded a plane for New York City, that contaminated shrine, place of my birth. I knew Azarian would assume leadership of the band, his body being prettiest. As to the rest, I left them to their respective uproars- news media, promotion people, agents, accountants, various members of the managerial peerage. The public would come closer to understanding my disappearance than anyone else. It was not quite as total as the act they needed and nobody could be sure whether I was gone for good. For my closest followers, it foreshadowed a period of waiting. Either I'd return with a new language for them to speak or they'd seek a divine silence attendant to my own. I took a taxi past the cemetaries toward Manhattan, tides of ash-light breaking across the spires. new York seemed older than the cities of Europe, a sadistic gift of the sixteenth century, ever on the verge of plague. The cab driver was young, however, a freckled kid with a moderate orange Afro. I told him to take the tunnel. Is there a tunnel?" he said.

In the end—as in the beginning—it is the authentic performance of the Beatles’ peculiar, elaborate, unfettered art that matters. It is the performance that makes the text possible in the first place, that imbues it with the heartbreaking reality of our transitory existence. It is the impermanence of the moment—rendered seemingly permanent by magnetic tape and celluloid—that is so vexing in its realness that it somehow seems immutable. Take the rooftop concert, with London’s blustery, wintry winds swirling up from the streetscape as John, Paul, George, and Ringo make one last play for greatness after a month of soul-destroying misery. They climbed the stairs above 3 Savile Row and willed a final, breathtaking performance for the ages. It is the primal image of the Beatles having become lost in the pure joy of their sound, just as they had done so many years before in the Cavern and not so very long ago in Studio Two. Everything else—the gossip, the intrigue, the emotional collapse—suddenly becomes moot, irrelevant even, as Ringo keeps the backbeat strong and true on his Ludwigs, while George furrows his brow as he drives his Rosewood Telecaster home. And John and Paul, smiling at each other across the staves of memory, play their hearts out one more time. The rest is silence.

When I was your age, I would go to plays all the time, just sit in the darkness and try to take it all in inside me. Contain everything in some corner of my heart so that when I had my shot, it could all come pouring out - all the lights and moments and colour.

Later that evening, a concert at the Lincoln Memorial, part of an always awkward effort to import pop culture to Washington, ended up, absent any star power, with Trump himself taking the stage as the featured act, angrily insisting to aides that he could outdraw any star.

Moments   We have an infinite amount of moments. Some that we count as our best memories, and others we suppress. Moments we wish we could live again and others we want to detach from the hinges of a door so tightly closed. We are made up of moments. The pictures hidden between pages of books. The concert tickets piling up in a bin, crinkled from the multiple folds as we shoved it in our pockets and washed the jeans it was in. Life is beautiful for giving us an infinite amount of moments. We may be made of cells, bones, and muscle, but moments are what make up our soul. Embrace

stand here today as hopeful as ever that the United States of America will endure, that it will prevail, that the dream of our founders will live on in our time. Barack Obama At the Lincolm Memorial concert on National Mall in Washington, January 18, 2009, two days before his inauguration as US President.

They could remember the last Super Bowl and World Series and Olympics and the last movie they’d seen or concert they went to, but not when it was decided that there wouldn’t be another. The Fall didn’t leave a definitive mark on the memory of society, not like such a disaster should have. But personal memory remained. Kath always remembered exactly when her parents died, exactly the last time she spoke with her brother, and exactly when she herself left the old world behind. Right to the end, she’d been able to tell stories about her friends, the people who’d helped her and taken care of her, and spoken of where and how they died, from accident, disease, or simple old age. The world might not remember, but she would.

It’s like we are in a grand symphony,” Dr. Hew Len explained. “Each of us has an instrument to play. I have one, too. Your readers have theirs. None are the same. In order for the concert to play and everyone to enjoy it, they need to play their part and not another’s. We get into trouble when we don’t pick up our instrument or we think someone has a better one. That’s memory.

The fifth principle emphasizes another human strength: whenever possible, we should take measures to re-spatialize the information we think about. We inherited “a mind on the hoof,” as Andy Clark puts it: a brain that was built to pick a path through a landscape and to find the way back home. Neuroscientific research indicates that our brains process and store information—even, or especially, abstract information—in the form of mental maps. We can work in concert with the brain’s natural spatial orientation by placing the information we encounter into expressly spatial formats: creating memory palaces, for example, or designing concept maps. In the realm of education research, experts now speak of “spatializing the curriculum”—that is, simultaneously drawing on and strengthening students’ spatial capacities by having them employ spatial language and gestures, engage in sketching and mapmaking, and learn to interpret and create charts, tables, and diagrams. The spatialized

My personal war against the so-called “soccer menace” probably reached its peak in 1993, when I was nearly fired from a college newspaper for suggesting that soccer was the reason thousands of Brazilians are annually killed at Quiet Riot concerts in Rio de Janeiro, a statement that is—admittedly—only half true. A few weeks after the publication of said piece, a petition to have me removed as the newspaper’s sports editor was circulated by a ridiculously vocal campus organization called the Hispanic American Council, prompting an “academic hearing” where I was accused (with absolute seriousness) of libeling Pelé. If memory serves, I think my criticism of soccer and Quiet Riot was somehow taken as latently racist, although—admittedly—I’m not completely positive, as I was intoxicated for most of the monthlong episode. But the bottom line is that I am still willing to die a painful public death, assuming my execution destroys the game of soccer (or—at the very least—convinces people to shut up about it).

The bioelectricity of her brain has ceased to function, and as I lay here, the cells are beginning to degenerate and every thought and memory she had is irretrievably fading into nothing. We were like phone towers in concert, reciprocating, each useless without the other, and now I feel like a massive star extending its light, heat, and gravitational pull into a radiant and beautiful universe only to discover that it is singularly without planets, only holding down a vestigial field of cold, dark rocks.

These solo concerts were without precedent, not only in jazz history, but also in the entire history of the piano. They were not renditions of composed music committed to memory, nor were they a series of variations on composed themes. They were attempts at very long stretches (up to an hour at a time) of total improvisation, the creation from scratch of everything: rhythms, themes, structures, harmonic sequences and textures. Before a concert, Jarrett would try to empty himself of all preconceived ideas, and then allow the music to flow through and out of him. He said that if he was not able to empty himself he would, almost invariably, have a concert that was not as good. There might be periods when he seemed to be marking time but and feeling his way into a new area, but this was also part of the total experience which delighted and enthralled audiences. The sustained intensity of Jarrett’s inspiration during these marathons was literally awesome and, almost in the sense of preacher and congregation, he seemed to want the audiences to be not only witnesses but also participators on the occasion...

No one wants to learn an instrument, Rachel. It's grueling repetition. And besides, you're too old to start. Concert violinists who learn the traditional way begin when they're six or seven." Risa can't help but listen to the irritating conversation taking place between the well-dressed woman and her fashionably disheveled teenage daughter. "It's bad enough they'd be messing in my brain and giving me a NeuroWeave," the girl whines. "But why do I have to have the hands, too? I like my hands!" The mother laughs. "Honey, you've got your father's stubby, chubby little fingers. Trading up will only do you good in life, and it's common knowledge that a musical NeuroWeave requires muscle memory to complete the brain-body connection." "There are no muscles in the fingers!" the girl announces triumphantly. "I learned that in school." The mother gives her a long-suffering sigh. "Think of them like a pair of gloves, Rachel. Fancy silk gloves, like a princess wears." Risa can't stand it anymore. Making sure she's low enough so that her face can't be seen, she gets up, and as she walks past them, she says, "You'll have someone else's fingerprints.

Pain never stops sounding the alarm; she never falls asleep on the job. At the moment we shut down our hearts, or begin entertaining harmful beliefs as ultimate truth, or interpret our experiences in a way that hinders our evolution, Pain starts poking us…just a little at first but if we ignore her, she'll start clanging cymbals in our ears until we acknowledge her presence. Pain is a message, a signal, an alert. Pain is Truth's formless, eternal Sentinel. Pain is indeed the Great Teacher, and she works in concert with Truth to purify consciousness and allow transmutation.

Einstein also became a supporter of racial tolerance. When Marian Anderson, the black contralto, came to Princeton for a concert in 1937, the Nassau Inn refused her a room. So Einstein invited her to stay at his house on Mercer Street, in what was a deeply personal as well as a publicly symbolic gesture. Two years later, when she was barred from performing in Washington’s Constitution Hall, she gave what became a historic free concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Whenever she returned to Princeton, she stayed with Einstein, her last visit coming just two months before he died.63 One

Are you still working on that bucket list of yours?" Amelia nodded. "As I remember, you mentioned a few things for Ireland." He smiled with humor lacing his eyes as he said, "Like kissing the Blarney Stone at Blarney Castle." She laughed as she opened her brochure of things to do in southern Ireland. "You've got a good memory." Amelia pointed to a picture of a beautiful garden full of flowers. "I want to visit the Blarney Gardens, too." He pointed to another picture and said, "How about the Blarney dungeons? That looks awesome to explore." She looked up at him and smiled. "Yeah. I've also been interested in listening to a live Irish concert.

The concerts went off as Concert for Bangladesh on August 1 (afternoon and evening shows), with Ringo Starr double-drumming next to Jim Keltner and an all-star band, including Billy Preston, Leon Russell, Klaus Voormann, Badfinger, and Eric Clapton. Reunion rumors evaporated the minute Harrison introduced Bob Dylan, who hadn’t performed widely in America since his motorcycle accident in 1966. Except for the Woody Guthrie memorial concert with the Band in 1968, Dylan hadn’t appeared on a New York stage since 1966, and he quickly upstaged everybody by reworking five songs that signaled a larger return to form. Once again, Harrison trumped expectations by bringing in a ringer.

When Camilla and her husband joined Prince Charles on a holiday in Turkey shortly before his polo accident, she didn’t complain just as she bore, through gritted teeth, Camilla’s regular invitations to Balmoral and Sandringham. When Charles flew to Italy last year on a sketching holiday, Diana’s friends noted that Camilla was staying at another villa a short drive away. On her return Mrs Parker-Bowles made it quite clear that any suggestion of impropriety was absurd. Her protestations of innocence brought a tight smile from the Princess. That changed to scarcely controlled anger during their summer holiday on board a Greek tycoon’s yacht. She quietly simmered as she heard her husband holding forth to dinner-party guests about the virtues of mistresses. Her mood was scarcely helped when, later that evening, she heard him chatting on the telephone to Camilla. They meet socially on occasion but, there is no love lost between these two women locked into an eternal triangle of rivalry. Diana calls her rival “the rotweiller” while Camilla refers to the Princess as that “ridiculous creature”. At social engagements they are at pains to avoid each other. Diana has developed a technique in public of locating Camilla as quickly as possible and then, depending on her mood, she watches Charles when he looks in her direction or simply evades her gaze. “It is a morbid game,” says a friend. Days before the Salisbury Cathedral spire appeal concert Diana knew that Camilla was going. She vented her frustration in conversations with friends so that on the day of the event the Princess was able to watch the eye contact between her husband and Camilla with quiet amusement. Last December all those years of pent-up emotion came flooding out at a memorial service for Leonora Knatchbull, the six-year-old daughter of Lord and Lady Romsey, who tragically died of cancer. As Diana left the service, held at St James’s Palace, she was photographed in tears. She was weeping in sorrow but also in anger. Diana was upset that Camilla Parker Bowles who had only known the Romseys for a short time was also present at such an intimate family service. It was a point she made vigorously to her husband as they travelled back to Kensington Palace in their chauffeur-driven limousine. When they arrived at Kensington Palace the Princess felt so distressed that she ignored the staff Christmas party, which was then in full swing, and went to her sitting-room to recover her composure. Diplomatically, Peter Westmacott, the Wales’s deputy private secretary, sent her avuncular detective Ken Wharfe to help calm her.

The Cold War was not his topic, but in an aside, he spoke briefly about the nature of communism: “It is a cruel and humorless sort of pun that so powerful a present form of modern tyranny should call itself by the very name of a belief in community, by a word, ‘communism,’ which in other times evoked memories of villages and village inns and of artisans concerting their skills, and of men learning [to be] content with anonymity. But perhaps only a malignant end can follow the systematic belief that all communities are one community; that all truth is one truth; that all experience is compatible with all other; that total knowledge is possible; that all that is potential can exist as actual. This is not man’s fate; this is not his path; to force him on it makes him resemble not that divine image of the all-knowing and all-powerful but the helpless, iron-bound prisoner of a dying world.

What to Make a Game About? Your dog, your cat, your child, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your mother, your father, your grandmother, your friends, your imaginary friends, your summer vacation, your winter in the mountains, your childhood home, your current home, your future home, your first job, your worst job, the job you wish you had. Your first date, your first kiss, your first fuck, your first true love, your second true love, your relationship, your kinks, your deepest secrets, your fantasies, your guilty pleasures, your guiltless pleasures, your break-up, your make-up, your undying love, your dying love. Your hopes, your dreams, your fears, your secrets, the dream you had last night, the thing you were afraid of when you were little, the thing you’re afraid of now, the secret you think will come back and bite you, the secret you were planning to take to your grave, your hope for a better world, your hope for a better you, your hope for a better day. The passage of time, the passage of memory, the experience of forgetting, the experience of remembering, the experience of meeting a close friend from long ago on the street and not recognizing her face, the experience of meeting a close friend from long ago and not being recognized, the experience of aging, the experience of becoming more dependent on the people who love you, the experience of becoming less dependent on the people you hate. The experience of opening a business, the experience of opening the garage, the experience of opening your heart, the experience of opening someone else’s heart via risky surgery, the experience of opening the window, the experience of opening for a famous band at a concert when nobody in the audience knows who you are, the experience of opening your mind, the experience of taking drugs, the experience of your worst trip, the experience of meditation, the experience of learning a language, the experience of writing a book. A silent moment at a pond, a noisy moment in the heart of a city, a moment that caught you unprepared, a moment you spent a long time preparing for, a moment of revelation, a moment of realization, a moment when you realized the universe was not out to get you, a moment when you realized the universe was out to get you, a moment when you were totally unaware of what was going on, a moment of action, a moment of inaction, a moment of regret, a moment of victory, a slow moment, a long moment, a moment you spent in the branches of a tree. The cruelty of children, the brashness of youth, the wisdom of age, the stupidity of age, a fairy tale you heard as a child, a fairy tale you heard as an adult, the lifestyle of an imaginary creature, the lifestyle of yourself, the subtle ways in which we admit authority into our lives, the subtle ways in which we overcome authority, the subtle ways in which we become a little stronger or a little weaker each day. A trip on a boat, a trip on a plane, a trip down a vanishing path through a forest, waking up in a darkened room, waking up in a friend’s room and not knowing how you got there, waking up in a friend’s bed and not knowing how you got there, waking up after twenty years of sleep, a sunset, a sunrise, a lingering smile, a heartfelt greeting, a bittersweet goodbye. Your past lives, your future lives, lies that you’ve told, lies you plan to tell, lies, truths, grim visions, prophecy, wishes, wants, loves, hates, premonitions, warnings, fables, adages, myths, legends, stories, diary entries. Jumping over a pit, jumping into a pool, jumping into the sky and never coming down. Anything. Everything.

I missed my workout this morning, so I vault up the stairs to my flat. Breakfast has taken longer than intended, and I'm expecting Oliver at any minute. Part of me also hopes that Alessia will still be there. As I approach my front door, I hear music coming from the flat. Music? What's going on? I slide my key into the lock and cautiously open the door. It's Bach, one of his preludes in G Major. Perhaps Alessia is playing music through my computer. But how can she? She doesn't know the password. Does she? Maybe she's playing her phone through the sound system, though from the look of her tatty anorak she doesn't strike me as someone who has a smartphone. I've never seen her with one. The music rings through my flat, lighting up its darkest corners. Who knew that my daily likes classical? This is a tiny piece of the Alessia Demachi puzzle. Quickly I close the door, but as I stand in the hallway, it becomes apparent that the music is not coming from the sound system. It's from my piano. Bach. Fluid and light, played with a deftness and understanding I've only heard from concert-standard performers. Alessia? I've never managed to make my piano sing like this. Taking off my shoes, I creep down the hallway and peer around the door into the drawing room. She is seated at the piano in her housecoat and scarf, swaying a little, completely lost in the music, her eyes closed in concentration as her hands move with graceful dexterity across the keys. The music flows through her, echoing off the walls and ceiling in a flawless performance worthy of any concert pianist. I watch her in awe as she plays, her head bowed. She is brilliant. In every way. And I'm completely spellbound. She finishes the prelude, and I step back into the hall, flattening myself against the wall in case she looks up, not daring to breath. However, without missing a beat she goes straight into the fugue. I lean against the wall and close my eyes, marveling at her artistry and the feeling that she puts into each phrase. I'm carried away by the music, and as I listen, I realize that she wasn't reading the music. She's playing from memory. Good God. She's a fucking virtuoso. And I remember her intense focus when she examined my score while she was dusting the piano. Clearly she was reading the music. Shit. She plays at this standard and she was reading my composition? The fugue ends, and seamlessly she launches into another piece. Again Bach, Prelude in C-sharp Major, I think.

I was not able to sleep that night. To be honest, I didn’t even try. I stood in front of my living room window, staring out at the bright lights of New York City. I don’t know how long I stood there; in fact, I didn’t see the millions of multicolored lights or the never-ending streams of headlights and taillights on the busy streets below. Instead, I saw, in my mind’s eye, the crowded high school classrooms and halls where my friends and I had shared triumphs and tragedies, where the ghosts of our past still reside. Images flickered in my mind. I saw the faces of teachers and fellow students I hadn’t seen in years. I heard snatches of songs I had rehearsed in third period chorus. I saw the library where I had spent long hours studying after school. Most of all, I saw Marty. Marty as a shy sophomore, auditioning for Mrs. Quincy, the school choir director. Marty singing her first solo at the 1981 Christmas concert. Marty at the 1982 Homecoming Dance, looking radiant after being selected as Junior Princess. Marty sitting alone in the chorus practice room on the last day of our senior year. I stared long and hard at those sepia-colored memories. And as my mind carried me back to the place I had sworn I’d never return to, I remembered.

And I still have other smothered memories, now unfolding themselves into limbless monsters of pain. Once, in a sunset-ending street of Beardsley, she turned to little Eva Rosen (I was taking both nymphets to a concert and walking behind them so close as almost to touch them with my person), she turned to Eva, and so very serenely and seriously, in answer to something the other had said about its being better to die than hear Milton Pinski, some local schoolboy she knew, talk about music, my Lolita remarked: 'You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own'; and it struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my darling's mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile clichés, there was in her a garden and a twilight, and a palace gate — dim and adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely forbidden to me, in my polluted rags and miserable convulsions; for I often noticed that living as we did, she and I, in a world of total evil, we would become strangely embarrassed whenever I tried to discuss something she and an older friend, she and a parent, she and a real healthy sweetheart, I and Annabel, Lolita and a sublime, purified, analyzed, deified Harold Haze, might have discussed — and abstract idea, a painting, stippled Hopkins or shorn Baudelaire, God or Shakespeare, anything of a genuine kind. Good will! She would mail her vulnerability in trite brashness and boredom, whereas I, using for my desperately detached comments an artificial tone of voice that set my own last teeth on edge, provoked my audience to such outburst of rudeness as made any further conversation impossible, oh my poor, bruised child.

It’s like we are in a grand symphony,” Dr. Hew Len explained.“Each of us has an instrument to play. I have one, too.Your readers have theirs. None are the same. In order for the concert to play and everyone to enjoy it, they need to play their part and not another’s. We get into trouble when we don’t pick up our instrument or we think someone has a better one.That’s memory

Music has no interior beacon that guarantees permanent meaning. Unlike truth, which is transcultural, absolute, and unchangeable, music can shift in meaning from place to place and time to time. Of all the art forms, music is inherently the most flexible. The music of Bach, as deeply fixed within the churchly contexts of his time and ours, can still shift meanings while remaining great music in its own right. For Lutherans it is church music, par excellence. For the young convert from Satanism, it was evil. In its original form, the tune “Austria” was the imperial national anthem, “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser,” composed by Haydn. He then used it as the principal theme for the slow movement in his Emperor Quartet. In this guise it reflects the essentially secular contexts for which it was written and is perfectly at home in the concert hall. It is also the tune for “Deutschland über Alles,” the German national anthem. And for Jewish people, it is associated with the unspeakable horrors of the holocaust. And finally, it is the tune to which the hymn “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken” is sung in virtually all American churches. To American Christians this tune’s primary meaning is “sacred.” To them, it carries virtually none of its first two meanings, unless one or the other was impressed first into their memories. There is no way to explain this phenomenon other than that music, as music, is completely relative.

Dent recognized it; the intermezzo before the last movement of De Bruik’s Human Biology. The finale of the symphony was a standard concert opener in the outer worlds. Soon the crackling of superamplified muscle contractions and the rush of adrenaline into the bloodstream announced the shift to the finale, and the crowd cheered wildly; Dent could feel his blood surging through him—

In 1936 my parents bought a radio, a German manufactured, big apparatus, which needed a roof antenna. It looked similar in appearance to today's television. We heard broadcasts on long, medium and short waves and could enjoy programs from all over the world. A weekly radio program listed most European stations. On short waves one could hear programs from overseas. It was magic. We heard a Passover service from Jerusalem; we heard wonderful concerts from most big cities in Europe; news in Romanian, German, French and lovely light music from Sofia, Bulgaria.

After a few minutes, she speaks up again. “You’re next. Sing.” Anxiety grips Hallelujah’s chest, squeezing. “I don’t sing,” she says. “C’mon, it doesn’t matter if you’re bad. It’s not like this is a concert hall—” “She’s not bad.” Jonah’s back. “She has a great voice.” Rachel swings around to look from Jonah to Hallelujah. “Really? Now you have to—” “No." “But—” “I don’t sing,” Hallelujah repeats, turning away. Jonah joins them by the fire. The silence stretches out. Except it’s not really silent, not with the birds and wind and fire and how loud Hallelujah’s heart is beating. And then Jonah clears his throat. “You used to sing,” he says. “You were great.” Hallelujah ignores the compliment. She looks into the fire. She feels the last of the day’s happiness fading away, already a memory. “Why’d you quit?” Jonah asks. “Was it ’cause of Luke?” Hallelujah inhales deeply. She feels the familiar spark of anger in her gut. “Yes,” she says. “It was because of Luke. And you. And everyone else. So thanks for that.” Jonah’s face drops. She can see that she’s hit a nerve. Well, he hurt her first. The way he took Luke’s side, shutting her out. The loss of his friendship, when she needed a friend most. The loss of their voices harmonizing, when she needed music most. How she just hurt him can’t begin to compare to all of that.

While reading some old articles to jog my memory for this book, I came across an article in the Chicago Sun-Times by Rick Kogan, a reporter who traveled with Styx for a few concert dates in 1979. I remember him. When we played the Long Beach Civic Center’s 12,000-seat sports arena in California, he rode in the car with JY and me as we approached the stadium. His recounting of the scene made me smile. It’s also a great snapshot of what life was like for us back in the day. The article from 1980 was called, “The Band That Styx It To ‘Em.” Here’s what he wrote: “At once, a sleek, gray Cadillac limousine glides toward the back stage area. Small groups of girls rush from under trees and other hiding places like a pack of lions attacking an antelope. They bang on the windows, try to halt the driver’s progress by standing in front of the car. They are a desperate bunch. Rain soaks their makeup and ruins their clothes. Some are crying. “Tommy, Tommmmmmmmmy! I love you!” one girl yells as she bangs against the limousine’s window. Inside the gray limousine, James Young, the tall, blond guitarist for Styx who likes to be called J.Y. looks out the window. “It sure is raining,” he says. Next to him, bass player Chuck Panozzo, finishing the last part of a cover story on Styx in a recent issue of Record World magazine, nods his head in agreement. Then he chuckles, and says, “They think you’re Tommy.” “I’m not Tommy Shaw,” J.Y. screams. “I’m Rod Stewart.” “Tommy, Tommmmmmmmmy! I love you! I love you!” the girl persists, now trying desperately to jump on the hood of the slippery auto. “Oh brother,” sighs J.Y. And the limousine rolls through the now fully raised backstage door and he hurries to get out and head for the dressing room. This scene is repeated twice, as two more limousines make their way into the stadium, five and ten minutes later. The second car carries young guitarist Tommy Shaw, drummer John Panozzo and his wife Debbie. The groupies muster their greatest energy for this car. As the youngest member of Styx and because of his good looks and flowing blond hair, Tommy Shaw is extremely popular with young girls. Some of his fans are now demonstrating their affection by covering his car with their bodies. John and Debbie Panozzo pay no attention to the frenzy. Tommy Shaw merely smiles, and shortly all of them are inside the sports arena dressing room. By the time the last and final car appears, spectacularly black in the California rain, the groupies’ enthusiasm has waned. Most of them have started tiptoeing through the puddles back to their hiding places to regroup for the band’s departure in a couple of hours.” Tommy

Your youth is the most important thing you will ever have. It’s when you will connect to music like a primal urge, and the memories attached to the songs will never leave you. Please hold on to everything. Keep every note, mix tape, concert ticket stub, and memory you have of music from your youth. It’ll be the one thing that might keep you young, even if you aren’t anymore. Let the music play …

Events such as this are not just movies, but genuine adventures; the films themselves when removed from their context amount to nothing. The company, the mood, the venue—they’re as integral to a moviegoing memory as they are to a romantic meal, a thrilling concert, a great ball game. Think

She had understood perfectly what Dr. Igor meant, just as she understood that, although she had always felt loved and protected, there had been one missing element that would have transformed that love into a blessing: She should have allowed herself to be a little crazier. Her parents would still have loved her, but, afraid of hurting them, she had not dared to pay the price of her dream. That dream was now buried in the depths of her memory, although sometimes it was awoken by a concert or by a beautiful record she happened to hear. Whenever that happened, though, the feeling of frustration was so intense that she immediately sent it back to sleep again.

Moments We have finite moments in an infinite universe. Some that we count as our best memories, and others we suppress. We are made up of moments. The pictures hidden between pages of books. The concert tickets piling up in a bin, crinkled from when we shoved them in our pockets and then washed the jeans. Life is beautiful for giving us these moments. We may be made of cells, bones, and muscle, but moments are what make up our souls. Embrace your moments. The good and the bad. Moments come too quickly, and one day you will do anything to have them back.

Right in the middle of a Stevie Wonder concert, right in the middle of this musical trance, this electronic night with thousands in the stadium, a night worthy of Metropolis with the thousands of cerebro-motor slaves gyrating to the rhythm of synthesizers and all the lighter flames serving as a luminous ovation - a new ritual worthy of the catacombs - I feel a total coldness, complete indifference to this faked music, without the slightest melodic phrase, music of a pitiless technicity. Everything is both visceral and coded at the same time. A strictly regulated release, a cold ceremonial, very far in human terms from its own musical savagery, which is merely that of technology. Only the visual impact remains, the spectacle of the crowd and its phYSical idolatry, particularly as the idol is blind and directs the whole thing with his dead eyes, exiled from the world and its tumult, but absorbing it all like an animal. The same air of sacredness as with Borges. The same translucidity of the blind, who enjoy the benefits of the silence of light and therefore of blackmail by lucidity. But modern idolatry is not easily accepted; the bodies stay clenched. Technicity wins out over frenzy in the new metropolitan nights. Growing old is not the approach of a biological term. It is the ever lengthening spiral which distances you from the physical and intellectual openness of your youth. Eventually, the spiral becomes so long that all chance of return is lost. The parabola becomes eccentric, and the peak of one's life-curve gets lost in space. Simultaneously the echo of pleasures in time becomes shorter. One ceases to find pleasure in pleasure. Things live on in nostalgia, and their echo becomes that of a previous life. This is the second mirror phase, and the beginning of the third age.

During the postwar occupation, many of MacArthur’s policies reinforced and abetted the collective amnesia of the Japanese. By order of the supreme commander, there was no concerted public effort to preserve the history or memory of the war—no monuments, no references in school textbooks, no national museum.

the ground. A whooshing sound accompanied their wings as they flew away. My most vivid memory of heaven is what I heard. I can only describe it as a holy swoosh of wings. But I’d have to magnify that thousands of times to explain the effect of the sound in heaven. It was the most beautiful and pleasant sound I’ve ever heard, and it didn’t stop. It was like a song that goes on forever. I felt awestruck, wanting only to listen. I didn’t just hear music. It seemed as if I were part of the music—and it played in and through my body. I stood still, and yet I felt embraced by the sounds. As aware as I became of the joyous sounds and melodies that filled the air, I wasn’t distracted. I felt as if the heavenly concert permeated every part of my being, and at the same time I focused on everything else around me. I never saw anything that produced the sound. I had the sense that whatever made the heavenly music was just above me, but I didn’t look up. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was because I was so enamored with the people around me, or maybe it was because my senses were so engaged that I feasted on everything at the same time. I asked no questions and never wondered about anything. Everything was perfect.

Breakups tend to fall into the category of silent losses, less tangible to other people. You have a miscarriage, but you didn't lose a baby. You have a breakup, but you didn't lose a spouse. So friends assume that you'll move on relatively quickly, and things like these concert tickets become an almost welcome external acknowledgment of your loss - not only of the person but of the time and company and daily routines, of the private jokes and references, and of the shared memories that now are yours alone to carry.

Despite the refusal of the Obama Justice Department to prosecute anyone at the IRS, it is clear that what happened was an epic clampdown on any conservative voices speaking or advocating against the president’s disastrous policies and in favor of patriotism and adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law. Over the course of twenty-seven months leading up to the 2012 election, not a single Tea Party–type organization received tax-exempt status. Many were unable to operate; others disbanded because donors refused to fund them without the IRS seal of approval; some organizations and their donors were audited without justification; and many incurred legal fees and costs fighting the unlawful conduct by Lerner and other IRS employees. The IRS suppressed the entire Tea Party movement just in time to help Obama win reelection. And everyone in the administration involved in this outrageous conduct got away with it without being punished or prosecuted. Was it simply a case of retribution against the perceived “enemies” of the administration? No, this was much bigger than political payback. It was a systematic and concerted effort to squash the Tea Party movement—one of the most organic and powerful political movements in recent memory—during an election season. [See Appendix for select IRS documents uncovered by Judicial Watch.] This was about campaign politics. It was a scandal for the ages. President Obama obviously wanted this done even if he gave no direct orders for it. In 2015, he told Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that “you don’t want all this money pouring through non-profits.” But there is no law preventing money from “pouring through non-profits” that they use to achieve their legal purposes and the objectives of their members. Who didn’t want this money pouring through nonprofits? Barack Obama. In the subsequent FOIA litigation filed by Judicial Watch, the IRS obstructed and lied to a federal judge and Judicial Watch in an effort to hide the truth about what Lois Lerner and other senior officials had done. The IRS, including its top political appointees like IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and General Counsel William J. Wilkins, have much to answer for over their contempt of court and of Congress. And the Department of Justice lawyers and officials enabling this cover-up in court need to be held accountable as well. If the Tea Party and other conservative groups had been fully active in the critical months leading up to the 2012 election, would Mitt Romney have been elected president? We will, of course, never know for certain. But we do know that President Obama’s Internal Revenue Service targeted right-leaning organizations applying for tax-exempt status and prevented them from entering the fray during that period. That is how you steal an election in plain sight. Accountability is not something we will get from the Obama administration. But Judicial Watch will continue its independent investigation and certainly any new presidential administration should take a fresh look at this IRS scandal.

Some possible new minds: A mind like a human mind, just faster in answering (the easiest AI mind to imagine). A very slow mind, composed primarily of vast storage and memory. A global supermind composed of millions of individual dumb minds in concert. A hive mind made of many very smart minds, but unaware it/they are a hive. A borg supermind composed of many smart minds that are very aware they form a unity. A mind trained and dedicated to enhancing your personal mind, but useless to anyone else. A mind capable of imagining a greater mind, but incapable of making it. A

I have no memories of my parents being together. They separated six months before the concert at which my father was booed. It is hard for me to imagine them as a couple.

Consistent and chronic distractions have the power we give it focal access, to rob us of our long-term historic memory of unhurried moments in life where we are divinely invited to experience that which is the lovely, praiseworthy and excellent...give heed to the call of voices in a song that raises the vibration of a melodic verses, in such a spectacular way, that our neurons create a bio-celluar concert to revive the soul of our best memories. . .selah

To remember people’s names, Pay Attention—Minimize distractions and focus on what they are saying. Making a concerted effort to concentrate will help you improve your memory.

The body was designed to be pushed, and in pushing our bodies we push our brains too. Learning and memory evolved in concert with the motor functions that allowed our ancestors to track down food, so as far as our brains are concerned, if we’re not moving, there’s no real need to learn anything.

I’d come here a lot over the years, using the enchanted door in my mentor’s home to get into concerts and bear witness to the burgeoning careers of such artists as Elvis Presley, David Bowie, and Bruce Springsteen. Treasured memories all.

Then there are “virtual organs”—feelings (courage, anger, desire) and the phenomenal experience of seeing colored objects or hearing music or having a certain episodic memory. The immune response, which is realized only when needed, is another example of a virtual organ: For a certain time, it creates special causal properties, has a certain function, and does a job for the organism. When the job is done, it disappears. Virtual organs are like physical organs in that they fulfill a specific function; they are coherent assemblies of functional properties that allow you to do new things. Though part of a behavioral repertoire on the macro level of observable traits, they can also be seen as composed of billions of concerted micro-events—immune cells or neurons firing away. Unlike a liver or a heart, they are realized transiently.

After another forty-five minutes, the train reached the station at Heron's Point, a seaside town located in the sunniest region in England. Even now in autumn, the weather was mild and clear, the air humid with healthful sea breezes. Heron's Point was sheltered by a high cliff that jutted far out into the sea and helped to create the town's own small climate. It was an ideal refuge for convalescents and the elderly, with a local medical community and an assortment of clinics and therapeutic baths. It was also a fashionable resort, featuring shops, drives and promenades, a theatre, and recreations such as golf and boating. The Marsdens had often come here to stay with the duke's family, the Challons, especially in summer. The children had splashed and swum in the private sandy cove, and sailed near the shore in little skiffs. On hot days they had gone to shop in town for ices and sweets. In the evenings, they had relaxed and played on the Challons' back veranda, while music from the town band floated up from the concert pavilion. Merritt was glad to bring Keir to a familiar place where so many happy memories had been created. The seaside house, airy and calm and gracious, would be a perfect place for him to convalesce.

These solo concerts were without precedent, not only in jazz history, but also in the entire history of the piano. They were not renditions of composed music committed to memory, nor were they a series of variations on composed themes. They were attempts at very long stretches (up to an hour at a time) of total improvisation, the creation from scratch of everything: rhythms, themes, structures, harmonic sequences and textures. Before a concert, Jarrett would try to empty himself of all preconceived ideas, and then allow the music to flow through and out of him. He said that if he was not able to empty himself he would, almost invariably, have a concert that was not as good. There might be periods when he seemed to be marking time but and feeling his way into a new area, but this was also part of the total experience which delighted and enthralled audiences. The sustained intensity of Jarrett’s inspiration during these marathons was literally awesome and, almost in the sense of preacher and congregation, he seemed to want the audiences to be not only witnesses but also participators on the occasion…

Breakups tend to fall into the category of silent losses, less tangible to other people. You have a miscarriage, but you didn’t lose a baby. You have a breakup, but you didn’t lose a spouse. So friends assume that you’ll move on relatively quickly, and things like these concert tickets become an almost welcome external acknowledgment of your loss—not only of the person but of the time and company and daily routines, of the private jokes and references, and of the shared memories that now are yours alone to carry.

Joan Joyce is the real deal, a fierce competitor and one of the greatest athletes and coaches in sports history. Tony Renzoni’s moving tribute to Joan shows us why she is a champion in sports and in life. —Billie Jean King, sports icon and equality pioneer The story is all true. Joan Joyce was a tremendous pitcher, as talented as anyone who ever played. [responding to a newspaper account of his early 1960s match-ups against Joan Joyce] —Ted Williams, Hall of Famer and Boston Red Sox great, December 30, 1999 Joan Joyce is truly the greatest female athlete in sports history. And a great coach as well. Tony Renzoni’s well-researched book is a touching tribute to this phenomenal athlete. I highly recommend this book! —Bobby Valentine, former MLB player and manager Quotes for Historic Connecticut Music Venues: From the Coliseum to the Shaboo: I would like to thank Tony Renzoni for giving me the opportunity to write the foreword to his wonderful book. I highly recommend Connecticut Music Venues: From the Coliseum to Shaboo to music lovers everywhere! —Felix Cavaliere, Legendary Hall of Famer (Young Rascals/Rascals, Solo) As the promoter of the concerts in many of the music venues in this book, I hope you enjoy living the special memories this book will give you. —Jim Koplik, Live Nation president, Connecticut and Upstate New York Tony Renzoni has captured the soul and spirit of decades of the Connecticut live music scene, from the wild and wooly perspective of the music venues that housed it. A great read! —Christine Ohlman, the “Beehive Queen,” recording artist/songwriter Tony Renzoni has written a very thoughtful and well-researched tribute to the artists of Connecticut, and we are proud to have Gene included among them. —Lynne Pitney, wife of Gene Pitney Our Alice Cooper band recorded the Billion Dollars Babies album in a mansion in Greenwich. Over the years, there have been many great musicians from Connecticut, and the local scene is rich with good music. Tony Renzoni’s book captures all of that and more. Sit back and enjoy the ride. —Dennis Dunaway, hall of famer and co-founder of the Alice Cooper band. Rock ’n’ Roll music fans from coast to coast will connect to events in this book. Strongly recommended! —Judith Fisher Freed, estate of Alan Freed

When I told close friends that I did not like to operate, they did not believe me or thought I was joking. Most surgeons whom I know have been able to protect themselves, either by rationalizing errors which they had committed or promptly erasing the bad memories. I could not do this. Instead of blotting out the failures, I remembered these forever. With growing concern, I came to believe that I was not emotionally equipped to be a surgeon or to deal with its brutality. The incongruity was that I did not like doing the one thing for which I had become uniquely qualified. It was as if I had trained all my life to become a violin virtuoso, only to discover that I loathed giving concerts or even playing privately.

Petty Rewind passionately revives the music of Tom Petty. These experienced musicians cover Petty's hits and recreate an authentic rock experience, profoundly resonating with fans. With a meticulously curated setlist spanning Petty's four-decade career, they aim for authenticity, capturing Petty's music's live essence and spirit. Each Tom Petty tribute band concert is an electric, palpable experience, creating enduring memories as enduring as the songs themselves.

Some people still talk of democracy as if it were pregnancy – there is no such thing as a little bit; it’s either there or not – even while we watch it being chipped away, or dynamited, by concerted, systematic attacks and lurching, instinctive cunning, or eroded by our own indifference or laziness. It is not so much about rules on paper, or conventions established over years, as about our own commitments – our own instincts and practices; what we are willing to accept, and what we are willing to do.

You have a breakup, but you didn’t lose a spouse. So friends assume that you’ll move on relatively quickly, and things like these concert tickets become an almost welcome external acknowledgement of your loss—not only of the person but of the time and company and daily routines, of the private jokes and references, and of the shared memories that now are yours alone to carry.

raise your awareness Any time you consider purchasing a new possession, stop yourself and think about what kind of experience it will give you. Ask yourself: How much joy will this bring me? Will the joy be temporary or long-lasting? Will this purchase provide me with an experience that will be unforgettable? Will the purchase be something I can share with others? If it becomes clear the purchase will provide only short-term benefit to you, think about an experience you could purchase instead that would provide you with longer-term benefits. For instance, if you have your eye on a new pair of shoes for $150, ask yourself what kind of experience you could enjoy for that same amount. Maybe you’d enjoy a concert with friends or a dinner cruise during the summer. Once you think of an experience you’d enjoy, seriously consider diverting the money for the purchase from possession to experience.

And if you are looking for a music fix, see what free concerts or performances are happening in your local community instead of going to an expensive show. the gift that keeps on giving For birthdays and holidays, gift loved ones with experiences instead of possessions.

express to loved ones Make an effort, at least once a week, to express appreciation to those you love. Although we don’t necessarily mean to, it is human to take the people we appreciate the most for granted. Yet expressing thanks for the things they do, their support, and their love will make them feel good and make you feel even better. Make a concerted effort to thank loved ones openly and to verbalize how much they mean to you. By the same token, part of practicing gratitude is being able to accept appreciation and thanks from others.

So three days before the millennium, Bianca called. “D’ya wanna go to the White House with Trisha and me?” By Trisha, she meant country singer Trisha Yearwood, whose record label, MCA, she’d recently been hired to work at. “When would that be, exactly?” I asked. “For that Millennium Concert at the Lincoln Memorial. There’s a party at the White House after and all.” She always talked like she was chewing gum between words. “They’re flying us there in a private jet. Ya don’t need to write about it. Just come as Trisha’s guest. It’ll be fun.” “Shit, I’m supposed to go ice-skating with some guys who think the world’s going to end. Give me a day to figure things out and I’ll get right back to you.

A popular piece of common knowledge that is frequently misquoted is that Mozart was buried in a “common grave,” a horrifying injustice when his genius was taken into account. But this term does not mean a communal grave, or the grave of a pauper, but rather the grave of a common man, which is a distinction that separates him from the aristocracy. It was still a modest burial, despite the fact that memorial services and concerts held in his honor in both Vienna and Prague were extremely well-attended.

Come to London with me,” she heard Devon say. “What?” she asked, bewildered. “Come to London with me,” he repeated. “I have to leave within a fortnight. Bring the girls and your maid. It will be good for everyone, including you. At this time of year there’s nothing to do in Hampshire, and London offers no end of amusements.” Kathleen looked at him with a frown. “You know that’s impossible.” “You mean because of mourning.” “Of course that’s what I mean.” She didn’t like the sparks of mischief that had appeared in his eyes. “I’ve already considered that,” he told her. “Not being as familiar with the rules of propriety as yourself, I undertook to consult a paragon of society about what activities might be permissible for young women in your situation.” “What paragon? What are you talking about?” Shifting her weight more comfortably in his lap, Devon reached across the table to retrieve a letter by his plate. “You’re not the only one who received correspondence today.” He extracted the letter from its envelope with a flourish. “According to a renowned expert on mourning etiquette, even though attending a play or a dance is out of the question, it’s permissible to go to a concert, museum exhibition, or private art gallery.” Devon proceeded to read aloud from the letter. “This learned lady writes, One fears that the prolonged seclusion of young persons may encourage a lasting melancholy in such malleable natures. While the girls must pay appropriate respect to the memory of the late earl, it would be both wise and kind to allow them a few innocent recreations. I would recommend the same for Lady Trenear, whose lively disposition, in my opinion, will not long tolerate a steady diet of monotony and solitude. Therefore you have my encouragement to--” “Who wrote that?” Kathleen demanded, snatching the letter from his hand. “Who could possibly presume to--” She gasped, her eyes widening as she saw the signature at the conclusion of the letter. “Dear God. You consulted Lady Berwick?

According to a renowned expert on mourning etiquette, even though attending a play or a dance is out of the question, it’s permissible to go to a concert, museum exhibition, or private art gallery.” Devon proceeded to read aloud from the letter. “This learned lady writes, One fears that the prolonged seclusion of young persons may encourage a lasting melancholy in such malleable natures. While the girls must pay appropriate respect to the memory of the late earl, it would be both wise and kind to allow them a few innocent recreations. I would recommend the same for Lady Trenear, whose lively disposition, in my opinion, will not long tolerate a steady diet of monotony and solitude. Therefore you have my encouragement to--” “Who wrote that?” Kathleen demanded, snatching the letter from his hand. “Who could possibly presume to--” She gasped, her eyes widening as she saw the signature at the conclusion of the letter. “Dear God. You consulted Lady Berwick?” Devon grinned. “I knew you would accept no one’s judgment but hers.” He bounced Kathleen a little on his knee. The slim, supple weight of her was anchored amid the rustling layers of skirts and underskirts, the pretty curves of her body corseted into a narrow column. With every movement she made, little whiffs of soap and roses floated around them. She reminded him of one of those miniature sweet-smelling bundles that women tucked into dressers and wardrobes. “Come,” he said, “London isn’t such an appalling idea, is it? You’ve never stayed at Ravenel House--and it’s in far better condition than this heap of ruins.

Zoe, I like every fucking version of you: the princess who used to chase me around with a wand and try to turn me into a toad, the version that sang karaoke in my living room like she didn’t care who was watching, the version that wrote in diaries about how big of a crush she had on me then left them under my little sister’s bed.”  She tries to pull her head back, to escape—from embarrassment or to yell at me, I don’t know—but I hold her head in place, continuing. “I love the version that keeps a ticket from a concert we went to fifteen years ago. I love the version that wants everyone to see her value, and I fucking love the version who jumped into her car to go on a random road trip with me. I love the version that doesn’t want me to get crumbs in her damn Jeep, and I love the version that gave in when I told her I needed food. I love the version that remembers crazy things we did as kids because that means we have memories together since the beginning.” Her head tries to move, her voice starting to protest with my name, but I press it in more.  “You keep pretending, Zoe. You keep living in this road trip ideal world where this is all fun, and we can figure out the details later, but know that I’m not pretending. This is us. This is me and you, and I’m not turning back.

Counterintuitive Case Study #3: Things or Experiences?: You have $1000. You can buy something to keep, or use it for an experience (trip, concert). Most assume the object will provide happiness for longer than a fleeting experience. Again, wrong. A study found that the happiness levels are equal at first, but as time goes by, people’s satisfaction with their material purchases decreased, whereas it increased for their experiences. In other words, people’s memories of experiences made them happier longer than owning objects.

I was finding it hard to manage my negative thoughts because, outside of Wendell’s office, they didn’t have much of an outlet. Breakups tend to fall into the category of silent losses, less tangible to other people. You have a miscarriage, but you didn’t lose a baby. You have a breakup, but you didn’t lose a spouse. So friends assume that you’ll move on relatively quickly, and things like these concert tickets become an almost welcome external acknowledgment of your loss—not only of the person but of the time and company and daily routines, of the private jokes and references, and of the shared memories that now are yours alone to carry.