STARDUST

Dedicated to Rod McKuen and all those who wrote liner notes for Reprise. ;-)

He was getting old. There was no two ways about it. Each time he looked in the mirror he saw the last reflections of his youth getting further away from him like a speeding car in the rear view. As the immovable object of time continued to relentlessly and mercilessly bear down on his fading dream of immortality, a weary acceptance began to emerge, one where he finally accepted the inherent transience of life, a sort of recognition in the divine obsolescence that would eventually break everyone and everything down into dust.

Of course, he wasn't entirely miserable about this fact and there were a great many things he was grateful for in his life. Naturally, in his own uniquely Quixotic way, he still stubbornly refused to believe his great adventure was over quite yet and that his 'impossible dream' would remain so forever.

But yet, sitting alone, on one of the last dark nights of an endless seeming winter, he felt an overwhelming urge to listen to his timeless hero, Frank Sinatra, a musical spirit guide of sorts who had provided the soundtrack from his eccentric youth to his now eccentric middle age.

He could remember the first time he heard the lyrics to "Young At Heart' and how much he loved the sentiment of the song.

Fairy tales can come true
It can happen to you if you're young at heart
For it's hard, you will find
To be narrow of mind if you're young at heart

You can go to extremes with impossible schemes
You can laugh when your dreams fall apart at the seams
And life gets more exciting with each passing day
And love is either in your heart or on its way

In fact, so affecting was the song that it ignited a lifetime obsession with Frank Sinatra which transcended any accusations of mere nerd devotion. And as the young man at that time invested heavily in his love of Sinatra, he soon began to learn that there just might be a Sinatra record for damn near every decade of his life. This was someone who he could travel through time with and it comforted to know Frank would always be there.

There was the Harry James Sinatra, the Tommy Dorsey Sinatra, Columbia Sinatra, Capitol Sinatra and finally, Reprise Sinatra.

He had finally reached the Reprise years and luckily for him that encompassed a good few decades to get him through to his dotage.

And on his 45th birthday, he decided to choose, like a vintage wine, a Frank song from the Reprise era that perhaps best reflected his ageing. 'Stardust' by Hoagy Carmichael on 'Sinatra and Strings' (1962) didn't seem an obvious choice at first, but as Frank had started out with it early in his career singing the very same song for Tommy Dorsey, it occured to him that there was a pathos to him singing it in middle age with, unusually, only the opening verse as a stand-alone.  

Listening to its shimmering excellence (thanks to arranger Don Costa), he couldn't help but feel he could relate.

And now the purple dusk of twilight time
Steals across the meadows of my heart
High up in the sky the little stars climb
Always reminding me that we're apart

You wandered down the lane and far away
Leaving me a song that will not die
Love is now the stardust of yesterday
The music of the years gone by