On occasion I will suddenly awaken in the middle of the night with A Thought, which then evolves into A Question, leading to the urge to look something up, which then means reaching for my phone in the dark to browse the internet and find out. This is not a healthy habit to have, staring at a screen emitting light between sleep cycles. It is a habit in which efforts have been made to curb, but it still happens and it happened last week – and then somehow it got off track and went a little haywire.

Somehow the thought I began pursuing when I woke up (the subject which is now totally forgotten) led me to YouTube, where I then happened to stumble upon a link for Lynyrd Skynyrd playing Free Bird at a live performance at Oakland Coliseum in 1977. The photo on the link was of lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, which eerily looked like a picture of my long ago high school boyfriend (who happened to be named Johnny, who tragically passed away in his thirties – and is no relation). Seeing that, I had to click on it to check it out further, and indeed there was a visual likeness that felt a bit surreal.

If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be traveling on, now
‘Cause there’s too many places I’ve got to see

In the Wayback Days my fondness for Southern rock pretty much centered around The Allman Brothers Band. While I’ve enjoyed a few songs by Lynyrd Skynyrd, I was not especially a fan, although I have always liked Free Bird, which has brought up some wistful, bygone, self-indulgent hurt – for example when an old boyfriend (not Johnny) had moved on from me

But if I stay here with you, girl
Things just couldn’t be the same

or when it was me who was the one that decided to move on (ironically, from Johnny.) In my brain those scenarios switch back and forth whenever I hear Free Bird. So I clicked on it and watched the video in order to indulge myself.

‘Cause I’m as free as a bird now
And this bird you cannot change
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
And the bird you cannot change
And this bird you cannot change
Lord knows I can’t change

It’s a pretty excellent video. I especially love Gary Rossington’s slide guitar.

Bye-bye, baby, it’s been a sweet love, yeah-yeah
Though this feeling I can’t change
But, please, don’t take it so badly
‘Cause Lord knows I’m to blame

At the point where it moves away from the slower ballad part and launches into the high powered kind of frenetic rock solo and finale by Allen Collins, Steve Gaines and Rossington, it became way too intense for me to digest at three A.M. lying in bed in the dark (especially at my age) and I decided to pack it in for the night. So I shut it off, finally fell back asleep, and that is when the dreams started.

So I’m playing in a band with a few old friends and we are up on stage at some local bar/pub that has live music and holds a small capacity of people. In the dream I am younger, as are my friends, we are all maybe in our twenties, kind of immortal and up for anything. I still have the capacity to hear perfectly (which I no longer have in real life) and I am standing up there with my old Gibson SG (which I also no longer have – and even when I did have it I really didn’t have the skill to play it very well anyway – but okay, this is a dream and you know how that goes).

At one point one of the guys asks “Is there anything anyone wants to hear?” and of course the classic response to that line after almost any band asks that question, usually (obnoxiously) shouted out by some inebriated guy from way in the back is “Play Free Bird!” In the dream I just smile, then take out my glass bottle neck slide and essentially shut the guy up by unexpectedly proceeding to play Free Bird, damn well I might add. I don’t recall who is singing it in the dream. It might be me but I’m not sure if it actually is me or if it even sounds like me. I wake up from the dream after the slower verses and before getting to the wild instrumental part at the end.

Whew, that was so weird! Not only that, but it happened again!!! The dream became a Recurrent Dream for a few nights. Same people, same bar, same drunk, same song, same scenario.

And then after the dreams stopped, the Free Bird Earworm began, which has been going on for over an entire week straight now.

But, if I stay here with you, girl
Things just couldn’t be the same

It just won’t stop! All day (and evening, and night), on and off. I figured maybe it was a sign pointing me in the direction of checking out more about Lynyrd Skynyrd (and that maybe if I did it might cease happening once I exhaust this mind that sometimes just won’t shut off until I have All the Answers.) So I went down that famous rabbit hole which lead me to interviews, opinions, stories and photos of everything I had never wondered about concerning Lynyrd Skynyrd. (At least Ronnie Van Zant looks a lot less like my high school boyfriend in other photos than he did in the Oakland video, which is how this all started).

While all this exploration and unbidden brain invasion has not necessarily made me a real Lynyrd Skynyrd fan, I still really like some of their songs and have gained an appreciation for their history and story.

‘Cause I’m as free as a bird now
And this bird you cannot change
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
And the bird you cannot change
And this bird you cannot change
Lord knows I can’t change
Lord, help me, I can’t change

So I’m a solid week or more into it now. Eventually something will come along to change the tune. Next time I wake up in the middle of the night with A Thought, I intend to pull up something totally different in an attempt to alter the trajectory.

Lord, I can’t change
Won’t you fly high, free bird, yeah

~*~

• Free Bird – Lynyrd Skynyrd (Allen Collins / Ronnie Van Zant) 1973