at last

Wounded birds are pretty much always omens, right?

Alvin Lucier, Music on a Long Thin Wire
Rolf Hind, Meditations: Piano Music of Olivier Messiaen

I woke up this morning with "At Last" in my head this morning because of, one assumes, the following reasons:

1. The Rapture. At last! People will stop playing Devil's advocate because for those of us left, he will have won the case.
2. My buddy Dave is getting married to a swell girl this weekend and I cannot imagine that this song will not somehow be played at the reception. It just played at the coffee shop, like just now.
3. I cannot get the Reigning Sound's version of "Stormy Weather" out of my head. It is so perfect a cover of the tiredest of staples that it has shifted the bias I have against covers in to a favorable category. Really, the song is like if the Archies broke up over Jughead's hamburger and milkshake addiction having grown so out of control, and ol' Jug hit rock bottom for a while, grew a beard, maybe even did a bunch of moody folk albums about how he can't have hamburgers any mo' and then remembered that rock 'n' roll is juicier than any hamburger and thicker than any milkshake because it is about the one you love, one way, targeted, missile heat sensor style and he loaded up with whatever was at hand and fired and hit! What I'm saying is: I can't quite picture "At Last" in the Sound's Greg Cartwright's fragile warble because it might be too much to bear. It'd be like looking back at Sodom as you flee. Pillar of salt.
4. There is a very specific book milestone that will be reached today, hell or high water, and we are in possession of both of those here along the sinful duodenum of the Mississippi.
5. Another even more specific milestone, one that will harrow this manuscript from the hell of my anxious grasp, will take place in a week's time.