It's Always Happy Birthday Somewhere

We can blame the Egyptians from 3,000 years ago for the original birthday celebrations. They revered their leaders so much , coronations became the birth of their new king or queen as gods for the masses to idolize on bended knees.

Celebrating birthdays in the Western World did not catch on with regular folk until the Industrial Revolution era. I am not sure and I don't want to take the time to know the reason why. That was the information I found after an exhaustive five minutes digging deep in the Wide World Web. I will say though, it was so very cool to find the Selfie on the left; and the moment was so important they carved it in stone. I cannot imagine standing still that long. But I think they really captured the moment, don't you?

So why a post about birthdays? Well, it's Harry Houdini's birthday. If he had lived long enough to be breathing today, he would be 152 years old. But he's not alive and hasn't been for 100 years. So why do we celebrate his birth and not his death? I am not sure why. That is just the way it is. Some traditions you don't fuck with, you just go with the flow.

Sometimes I have trouble understanding the logic of the things humans do. Many of our time honored traditions make no sense to me; Birthdays are certainly one of them. Birthdays are just one of the many ways we show fealty to the passage of Time. This puzzles me, especially when Time slows down after I get really, really baked.

I have never held birthdays in high regard. Matter of fact, I forget them regularly, especially my own. Thankfully, I have Facebook to remind me now of the birthdays I should remember. That helps, but I still blow it. 

We live, then we die. It's the shit we pulled between the two that matters, not the dates.

Later ..................................

________________________

Finding a birthday song I liked was not as tough as I expected. Please enjoy Blue Harlem's fine blues tune, "Blues Birthday". Some excellent piano riffs and a great female voice. Classic blues, the way it should be.