Time Travel with the Police

Yesterday afternoon was one of those times when I felt like I had fallen through a hole in time and landed several places at once:

--My spouse and I sat side by side, working on our courses, talking about the best ways to teach certain philosophical ideas.  In some ways, it felt like our early grad school years, which were also our early teaching years.

--But we were talking about online delivery and assessment options, which we wouldn't have been talking about when we first started teaching, over 20 years ago.

--As we worked, we listened to old music by the Police.  So it felt like our earliest dating years.

--The music, however, was created earlier than that.  So, oddly, it also felt like high school, when certain radio friendly hits came through the speakers.

--We listened on CDs, though, which wouldn't have been invented when we first started dating.  I bought those CDs to replace vinyl, long since given away or sold for a mere fraction of what I paid to get them.  I don't like to think about how much music I've bought multiple times over.  I wish I could say I still continue to listen to the music, so it was worth every penny.  I cannot say that.  Sigh.

--Along with this time travel looping, I was impressed with how timeless some of those lyrics have remained.  Consider these:

from 1981's Ghost in the Machine:

from the song:  "Rehumanize yourself":  "Violence here is a social norm." (I probably learned this sociological concept here before in my Sociology classes)

from "Spirits in the Material World":  "We are spirits, in the material world"--I've been singing about Gnosticism since before I knew what it was.

from the song "Too Much Information":  "Too much information  running through my brain. Too much information driving me insane."

In fact, much of this album still seems relevant to me, even though I'm at a very different point in my life than I was when I first started playing it incessantly, around 1984 or so.  I could elaborate, but that seems like a post for a different day.