Fore!, Sunny

"You like Huey Lewis and the News?" This is the sort of line I'd say ironically dozens of times, referencing that damn movie, over the last N years. I've never actually thought to confront the question, not really.

It is interesting having to confront one's own life this way, having questions reflected upon the asker like: Well, what do YOU think of Huey Lewis, and, Why are you doing this?

Rarely do I have to look so closely at something. Imagine staring at a piece of art for an hour plus. This is the type of exercise that reveals deeper layers in art. Unfortunately, it doesn't always reveal greater layers. The analog is re-listening to an album two dozen times to entice your friends to say a few words about it.

Enough prologuing, the music: it's what I expected. Not quite Sports but what I would figure from Huey. Enough hits here I recognize, and "Hip to Be Square" delivers the Bateman promise.

What's also interesting to review is the experience of asking friends to Write for no profitable reason at all, and also on a timetable. I actually don't know how editor JMK does it. Humans are creatures of habit; altering such habits with easy yet bizarre tasks requires decent social capital, or lacking that, capital capital. Maybe even that is not enough. Why does "100 words" sound daunting to so many? When did the technology of writing fall out of the hands of the common? Or am I simply too autistic to really understand the psychic blocks that surround the lives of my loved ones?

Somewhere around the Nth listen of "Forest for the Trees," it all clicked at once. Fore! is about mid-life, about growing older, and not necessarily gracefully, but accepting it, the growing older. Many begrudging acceptances underlie the lyrics here—"Stuck With You," "Hip to Be Square," "Naturally." Try to contrast this with, say, a Rolling Stones, who is growing older and completely protesting the fact. Fore! is The Big Chill of albums. Viewed from that lens all the songs make sense and are sadly relatable.

In the process of getting older, various puts and takes are made. BoJack Horseman-style exchanges are made; very little agency or planning or foresight can be profitably invested in any of it, and then at the end you're left with a certain texture of life that's not bad but not exactly what you expected, I guess. It's as Simple as That.

Anyway, the song that's stuck with me the most this week is "Stuck with You," no pun intended, for whatever reason. Probably that simple three-beat call and response works great. Do I like Huey Lewis and the News? I really don't know anymore. Thanks Huey for a hell of a week.