Music is a blessed respite from the grime, the contamination of day to day politics, commerce, the trade offs that must be made in order for life to go on.  I get it, this is not Paradise, this is East of Eden.  I do not live in a rose garden.  My opportunity, along with you is to make this life a heaven or a hell, to the extent that fortune allows.

I have been a Meatloaf fan for years.  I saw him live in concert at the Genesee Theater in Waukegan a few months ago.  I love his Wagnerian operatic vocals singing of the angst of love, and of resistance.  Is not Rock N Roll the art form of  rebellion and of romance?

The last track on the Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell II album is a song entitled Lost Boys And Golden Girls.  The lyric and more importantly the melody depicts the solitude and the glory of the outsiders experience.  I think this is universally true, particularly of those years between, the teenage years, when one is no longer a child, and contemplates the approaching responsibility of adulthood.  One is moving away from the custody of adults which bounds the experience of a child.  One is increasingly aware of how complicated adult decisions truly are.  They are life and death decisions often enough, made on the fly, with incomplete information.

I’ll share the youtube video with you, and the lyrics are appended after the video.  I’ll add that the work of the philosopher is also work done “out of time” as the philosopher stands outside of the “go-along-to-get-along” zeitgeist of his or her time and place in society.  A philosopher is an outlier, as was Socrates, Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Meatloaf.  Yes, include Meatloaf and every other artist whose sanity balances on the knife edge of their art.

We were born out of time, born out of time and alone
And we’ll never be as young as we are right now, running away and running for home, running for home

Lost Boys And Golden Girls

written by Jim Steinman

Lost boys and golden girls, down on the corner and all around the world
Lost boys and golden girls, down on the corner and all round, all around the world

It doesn’t matter where they’re going or wherever they’ve been,
’cause they’ve got one thing in common it’s true
They’ll never let a night like tonight go to waste,
and let me tell you something, neither will you, neither will you

We gotta be fast
We were born out of time, born out of time and alone
And we’ll never be as young as we are right now, running away and running for home,
running for home

It doesn’t matter where they’re going or wherever they’ve been,
’cause they’ve got one thing in common it’s true
They’ll never let a night like tonight go to waste,
and let me tell you something, neither will you, neither will you

Lost boys and golden girls, down on the corner and all around the world
Lost boys and golden girls, down on the corner and all around, all around the world