I've been living in the past all weekend

Is this what it is like to get older?  The past suddenly seems more interesting than the present.  Saturday night I went to  a concert at the Landis Theater in Vineland, NJ.  Lauren Fox sang songs of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen.  She seemed like Joni Mitchell of long ago.  When she sang Leonard's songs, she put on a fedora.  It was interesing getting the back story behind various songs.  She sang the one Joni wrote while hanging out with Leonard at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City.  Then she sang the one that HE wrote there, but it was about Janis Joplin.  He was quite the womanizer.  (Actually, weren't we all?)  It was taking me back to my youth.  She finished up with a song by each of them.  The word "FREE" came up an awful lot.  We all wanted to be free forever, not realizing that we could be imprisoned by our own selves.

Also thinking about the past a lot as someone is researching a communal house I lived in perhaps from 1975 - 1980.  So, there is a flurry of emails back and forth as we all recall things.  I have been procrastinating on my answers for a questionnaire that he sent out.  I had better hurry before all the stories THAT I REMEMBER have already been mentioned by others.  It was a good time at Atlantic Street House in Bridgeton, and I still love all the people, those that are not DEAD.

Sunday I went to a classical music concert which was fabulous.  Had to drive all the way down to Stockton State College in Pomona but at least a friend went with me.  I HAD to hear Rachmaninoff piano concerto #2 as it holds great sentimental value for me.  I was in LUST with a Frenchman who chose that record at my mother's house (she was away), put it on the stereo and proceded to tell me that it was "the most erotic piece of music ever written".  Need I say more about our subsequent activities?  I enjoyed hearing it again and reminiscing about former loves and one night stands. (I need to make a list!)

Finished a book, Beautiful ruins : a novel, by Jess Walter.  It has been mentioned in quite a few places and lists.  It jumps around a bit between time periods and locales.  Interestingly enough, I was on the Italian coastline in 1967 and there was a rumor that Liz Taylor and Richard Burton were dining in an outdoor cafe in Protofino.  So this guy writes a fictional (?) tale of a hotel owner who encounters an actress who apparently had a daliance with Richard Burton and is being hidden away in this obscure town and inn on the coast.  Later in life, an old man and a young writer meet at an agent's office in Los Angeles and, along with his assistant, they reveal more details about this story.  I thought is was pretty interesting and suspenseful and could almost have been true.  I borrowed it from the Vineland Public Library (FIC Walter Jess).