I see my life flipping back through the album bin. Where did I really start? Probably when my parents met, when for a fleeting second they played with cousins and friends on a beach that eventually became home to all of us once we too arrived on the scene. But back then it was just theirs to run on. So perhaps, this album would be called “Run On Babe.” Their’s was an epic run as was most pictured here along side the colored cabanas resting on that rocky Long Island northern shore. Perhaps you can hear strands of Sinatra and Fitzgerald crooning while surrounded by a big band filling the sultry heat of a beachy summer night?

“Brothers” would be next in my album bin, as they dominated my childhood and had great significance in every part of my selfhood. In this photo there are three of the four in an everyday moment. The music, a raw and rough early ’70’s Allman Brothers meets Grateful Dead mixed with the Rolling Stones. Heavy on electric guitar, lyrics spiraling with a drum kick for direction. A racing sound that just made you group dance in your living room on a Tuesday, which we certainly all did, mostly.

We spent quite a bit of time in Brooklyn. Both of my parents grew up there, and many family members stayed long after we shifted to New Jersey. Obviously there would be a “Brooklyn” in my record bin filled with plenty of 2000 synth-pop sounds like Cut Copy and Junior Boys. Music made universal overnight that brought everyone to the clubs until dawn and then pounded out of subwoofers in every trunk driving down the avenue. We walked for hours with those upbeat beats sparking up around us.

As a teacher of literature for over 3 decades, I would have at least one poetry driven modernist album with plenty of voice. Think Solange with a guest appearance from Joni Mitchell, both strong songwriters and lyricists, both ready to take you deep inside their eclectic and personal visions. The title would be a solid link to Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse” which I am proud to have coaxed my students through year after year with mild success. The reward was us traveling away from school to see a lighthouse, even one far removed from its watery local. The journey all that mattered.

Speaking of poetry, that album would be followed by an even more confessional outpouring or imploding or just an unraveling that might be expected mid-career. A “Coming Out” album that hits straight in the face. An acoustic Above & Beyond with the heart of Ani Difranco from which no one can leave unaffected. Plenty of tracks that blend all of it, punk, folk, hip-hop, jazz and funk. You might even get a Sly & The Family Stone vibe thrown in as the past hits the new sounds.

As confession usually does, that album would lead to a darker period where nothing made sense, and out of that despair would come a weak return. This Christmas record would hit the charts after a few barren years. The typical remakes would populate the vinyl but there would be one original song blending trends started by Missy Elliot and propelled by Lil’ Kim and Nicki Minaj. Visionaries who brought the feminist movement right into the male dominated rap world leading diversity directly to the top of the leader board. As the nod continues to those Queens most definitely bitch would be in the title as in “Back to Bitch” or some alliteration with a holiday jingle pounding out a solid beat just mesmerizing for the holidaze.

As day always follows night, the next album would be a genuine return to lightness: an original album that proves once again a genuine artistry with this cover of the big blue sky presiding over a vast green pasture. There would be mention of a lower-case goddess with gratitude for living in upbeat and demanding songs. Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, and Beyonce all come to town for this lower-case “new dawn” record. Collaborations would be extensive and complex, reaching across genres and aisles, to make the festival a rainbow of party people celebrating their very next breath like they should. A slow beat, beat, beat until you drop smiling with all your new friends who get the new you.

As light begets even more light, Gen Alpha is the start of something even newer. Some call them “the Regeneration, Generation Hope, Generation New Age, the Saviours, Generation Y-not and the New Generation” (McCrindle). These little people carry all the burdens, a climate crisis, rampant terrorism, along with a global recession so it is hard to imagine they will have much respect for who preceded them, except of course for the bigger than life icons like Biggie Smalls for which this album will be dedicated. Titled “This Time Around Too” like Michael Jackson‘s song that featured The Notorious B.I.G. this song would reveal the issues we all face in our troubled world, but that would not be the only message. Mereba sings of having a tight control over her “Sanctuary.” This promise needs to be granted to our new gen. Face fronting. Real timing. Hope generating. “A new chapter in a story that’s still being told” (Ken). Yes. Still.