A. I. Nostalgia

I need to get out and about.  I've been hampered this year by multiple medical things with my mother and myself.  Yesterday as I drove to a Greek place to get a takeout meal (roasted chicken and a big Greek salad), I went past places I didn't know existed and places I had never been before but meant to go.  And, of course, there were the places I used to go to.  

I'm even inundated with new places in my email inbox.

Just opened March 25th.  I want to go.  

The problem is multiple, though.  I don't like to plan.  I'd rather improvise.  I hate making reservations.  I like to do things on the spur of the moment, as they used to say.  For a very long time, I had people I could call and say, "Hey. . . do you want to get dinner?" or "Let's pop into the new place for a drink."  But I don't have any spontaneous friends any longer.  Marriage, kids, or distance.  My closest friends are now scattered across the country.  Or, like Brando, ex- and dead.  

And of course, there are the comforts of home that keep the aged in place.  

Now I've never been one who can't travel solo, but I also used to be someone who could confidently walk into a bar and expect (whether correctly or not) romance and adventure.  I'm not feeling that so much anymore.  I can, of course, but not with. . . never mind.  

I got antsy yesterday and wanted to do something, but I didn't know what.  And so I sat in a terrible waste of the day.  I don't want to continue this way.  Things are going to need to change.  Radically.  

Now, as I'm thinking of it, though, maybe I was unsettled by an article on my ex-wife's high-end life in a local magazine.  I wouldn't have known about it if it hadn't come to me in a text.  

"Your ex?"

Yea, it was my ex.  Funny enough, I've seen her approximately three times since we got divorced.  We run in different circles.  The photos of her in her home and in her high end jewelry store and clothing shop on The Boulevard were not of the girl to whom I was married.  Indeed, she now looks "surprised," if you know what I mean.  But she has done well financially, as have all my exes who weren't already wealthy . And as I sat in my broken 100 year old home in need of god knows what repairs, I felt somehow "lacking."  

What to do?  

So I ate chicken and salad at home with a friend, and when she left, I poured a whiskey and turned on the television.  I was going to watch the much touted "Mountainhead" on HBO, but when I scrolled through my recs on YouTube, this popped up.  

Of course, I watched that instead.  The doc is full of old films and photos of the art Boheme crowd in Cap d"Antibes frolicking away the summer.  I realized that I had seen the doc before, but I had to watch again.  There they are in the place that Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and the Murphy's invented a little over a decade before.  It was the life to which I have always aspired.  

When it was over, it was going on ten.  O.K. I put on "Mountainhead."  

It was awful.  It tried too hard and was just silly.  After half an hour, I turned it off and went to bed.  

I need to find some spontaneous people with Bohemian leanings and creative imaginations.  I need to get out.  

"What are you doing?  You want to grab a quick. . . ."

And way, as it sometimes goes, will lead to way.  

I had photos from T up on his mountain property in Tennessee.  My climbing buddy out in Cali sent me a video from some crazy hippy fair he was attending.  Q sent photos from a wooded river where he was camping with his son.  My Miami friend sent a late message.  C.C. is leaving for a month in Scotland this week.  

I get my stitches out on Thursday and will find out if I am free to do whatever or if I am still going to have restrictions.  I want to go for a photo walk this morning, but I still can't expose it to the sun and will have to wear long pants.  Not my jam.  I look forward to being able to get my body in sun and sea.  There are places I want to go.  

But hey--here is a big surprise.  To me, anyway.  You know that music I've posted the past two days, the background music for reading or making art?  It is all A.I.  Holy smokes--what?  I didn't know that was a thing, so I Googled it and found about twenty platforms for creating music with A.I.  Is that scary?  I'm not sure.  

"You know it's A.I.  It lacks soul."

But I don't know.  Listen to that singing voice, it's modulations that were based on Billie Holiday and others.  I know singers who can't do that.  And I'll bet that A.I. can make electronic music that will get the MDMA crowd hard and wet on the crowded dance floor.  I'm not an A.I. hater nor do I fear it.  Maybe I should.  I know that governments around the globe are using it to collect data on everyone and even spy on its citizens, but. . . what are you going to do?  Do you think you can hold your breath and stamp your feet and stop it?  It's the new reality.  Accept that you are nostalgic for "a simpler time."  It seems more "authentic."  Sure.  I love the olden times and would take a trip to Caps d'Antibes with the artists and writers of the 20's and 30's--but it ain't happening.  I've watched too many people become lost in their old lives and ways, unwilling to update, unable to change, looking more pathetic with each passing year.  

Nope.  I don't aspire to that.  I'm getting every OS update I'm offered.  I want all my programs up to date.  

I'm forgetting something I wanted to write this morning, but it is lost now.  I'll remember once I've posted.  I'm sure it was the better thought, the better thing.  It's like every lost roll of film.  You are sure the best pictures you ever took were on that roll.  

When I preview this post, I see that the French Riviera video is "age restricted" and so you must go to YouTube to watch it.  Too many titties in Caps d'Antibes, I guess.  You know how those Bohemians are.  

Eating and drinking and picnicking in the nude.  It looks so luscious and wonderful.  

A.I. Nostalgia.  I know. . . you didn't like it from the start.  

Oh, gosh. . . UPDATE: