Nights in White Satin: Forty Years on with the Moody Blues

Ah, the opening night of the Hollywood Bowl, how I love it! I love it especially when the summer weather is perfect, warm and breezy, cerulean blue sky morphing into a cool but comfortable dark evening. Len and I had our concession meal and people watched the baby boomers, like ourselves, though given the range for our generation, 1946 to 1964, some quite a bit older than us, take their seats with greater or lesser ease. The vagaries of physical health have affected us all differently. Yes, there were walkers, and some wobbling on the wide stairs. The man across the aisle from me reminded me of two people, both long gone. He was slim and bald, except for side hair, with glasses, a cross between my very serious late professor, Fr. Francis Canavan, S.J. and a more smiling Lin Kissane, with whom I used to work at the State Bar. It was hard to imagine him a young man, and much easier to remind myself of me as a young woman, beginning my course work at Fordham University, tentative and lacking confidence in my social skills.

The first half was pleasant enough, a yearly presentation of the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles participating with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra in a Shostakovitch piece. And then three of the original Moody Blues took the stage (I had to look that up, I had no idea who was alive, dead or replaced for other reasons). Voices were several octaves lower in capacity, but with the orchestral support to which the music of the Moody Blues always lent itself, I could have imagined myself and the rest of the white haired crowd back in the long ago day. It was a little incongruous, as such concerts, like the Eagles, or Steely Dan, or whatever the retro band playing usually are, this psychedelic music counterpoised against the harsh reality of time passing not only for us, but the guys on the stage. It is always a bit of a jolt to sense time's passing, but more so when clapping and singing along to the tunes of 40 plus years ago, when possibility was all and there was no sense of finality.

This paradox always moves me, to quiet tears in the darkness. The mind transports us back; the body, well, it stays firmly in the present, with its aches and pains and also with its joys and regrets.

The man across the aisle from me, who had had difficulty navigating the stairs, was singing along and waving his hands. I felt so much warmth for him.

By the time I got to Fordham, in 1972, Nights in White Satin was already an old hit, but a persistent one. The cycle of the day captured in a song. The cycle of lives. What would I be? Would I be a success? Would I love? I was sitting in our college basement restaurant, the Ramskellar, and I worried about how late a bloomer I was, and how inhibited and anxious about pretty much everything. Some things have worked out. Some others have not. Overall, I have developed wisdom enough to be grateful for the good things that have come my way.  And seeing perhaps the things that still may be.

"Isn't Life Strange"

Isn't life strange
A turn of the page
Can read like before
Can we ask for more?
Each day passes by
How hard man will try?
The sea will not wait

You know it makes me want to cry, cry, cry -
Wished I could be in your heart
To be one with your love
Wished I could be in your eyes

Looking back there you were, and here we are.

Isn't love strange
A word we arrange
With no thought or care
Maker of despair
Each breath that we breathe
With love we must weave
To make us as one
You know it makes me want to cry, cry, cry -

Wished I could be in your heart
To be one with your love
Wished I could be in your eyes
Looking back there you were, and here we are.

Isn't life strange
A turn of the page
A book without light
Unless with love we write;
To throw it away
To lose just a day
The quicksand of time
You know it makes me want to cry, cry, cry -

Wished I could be in your heart
To be one with your love
Wished I could be in your eyes
Looking back there you were:

Writer(s): John Charles Lodge 

"Seventh Sojourn" (1972)

Concert at the Hollywood Bowl, Moody Blues, June 17, 2017, Nights in White Satin