“Hangin Around The Observatory” By John Hiatt
I feel it is only apt that our first weekly music recommendation is “Hangin Around The Observatory” by John Hiatt. This particular track played a part in the inspiration of this blog and future podcast. The song itself, from the album of the same name, which was Hiatt’s debut album in 1974. If anyone us, they know that this song is fitting especially if you read the lyrics, maybe not all literally, but particularly the opening stanza:
Hangin’ around the observatory,
We were waitin’ to see the moon,
Well we thought that we was all gypsies,
Come to escape these lousy ruins.”
Which really makes me think of life leading up to this point, before we took action on striving for our potential. this track perfectly describes how we placed our life on a continuum. On one side we had our over romanticized idea of going to and fro, not having cares, that we were somehow escaping the dullness of life. The other side shows the harsh reality of what happens when we treat reality like it can be avoided. We hung around the observatory, but we were afraid to use the telescopes to magnify the problems in our life.
Now we are not. This song put in prose the feelings and tinges we had but could not decipher. Has there ever been a song that described who you are or what you had been going through in a way that you could not articulate? Has this ever happened to you? Tell us about it! It’s literally why we are writing this.