Day 13: Nothing Lasts Forever, Not Even Guns & Roses

Five things I’m grateful for today:

1. The guys who called to request “November Rain” by Guns & Roses after a day installing sheet rock.
2. The DJ on 100.7 who played it during a particularly hellish commute home this evening — through cold November rain, early November dark, and crosstown Boston rush hour traffic.
3. The excellent speakers in my car so I could blast Slash’s solo in the last two minutes of the song.
4. The peculiarly layered sensation of hearing the song in my car now, the memory of the first time I saw the music video on MTV, and reliving in an instant the twenty-plus years between the release of Appetite for Destruction, their brief stardom, their decline into obscurity, and their return as retro metal stars. The whole concept of retro metal still boggles my mind. Those years in the late 80s when hair metal ruled seem preserved in amber, out of time.
5. I will never have to live through the winter of 1989 again.