Some nights, with no need to set an alarm, you float around on the screen or on the stream…tonight was one of those nights. I came upon The Big Interview with Dan Rather and his time with Meat Loaf from 2016. It was fascinating, depressing and a cautionary tale all at once.

It was in April 1978, if I recall correctly, we had just moved to the Berkshires and I had taken a teaching job at Monument Mountain Regional HS back in November….we managed to get tickets to see Meat Loaf who had just released the Bat Out of Hell album at the very excellent venue (no long gone….) The Westchester Premier Theater. It was one of our first trips back from Massachusetts, We had 4th row seats and to this very day that show remains one of the best I’ve ever seen.

The Dan Rather show was full of clips from that time and it was like being in a time machine. I had not yet turned 30 myself, was, in fact, still a few years away, all of life was ahead of me.

As I write this, I have now crossed over into my Septuagenarian years, (though truth be told I still see 19 when I look in the mental mirror), I remembered an incredibly energetic singer with a powerful stage presence singing songs I still love today, talking to Dan Rather and seeming not only frail but oddly off kilter as he was talking about his career…while it was recorded a few years before he passed unexpectedly and suddenly less than a year ago, it was kind of shocking how he had aged.

I struggle with mortality and aging. I don’t feel frail or “old”, yet Father Time remains the only undefeated entity and the fact that Meat was 74 when he passed yet younger than I am now when he did that interview has me all kinds of out of sorts tonight…

I remember every little thing as if it happened only yesterday…….

it’s cold and lonely in the deep dark night.