“I’m betting he’s gonna swerve first.” – Phil Connors, Groundhog’s Day (1993)

Listening to my brother talk about major and minor keys in music, Seattle grunge, and the Beach Boys Death Cult (my term). What made the Beach Boys songs work wasn’t so much the song writing but the compositions around their voices. The actual songs, most of them, were dark, sad songs. What we’re living now is the decline of a Post-War Death Cult fueled by Beach Boys-style nostalgia. I was always fond of “Sloop John B,” a cute little ditty about a terrible boat ride. Then there’s the existential angst of “God Only Knows,” which, in a different key and composition, could sound like a Nirvana cover band. “I may not always love you / but as long as there are stars above you / you never need to doubt it” is a proclamation of love wrapped in the belief that there’s nothing after we die and if the speaker were to die in some war or a drag race or something, the beloved would then have to find some other starry-eyed lover who could write a different song in the same key about the temporary nature of love in the nuclear age.

Today, of course, is Groundhog Day, when the small cult that protects the inheritor rodent of Punxsutawney Phil gets all gussied up and prognosticates the entrance of Spring; I think of the movie, with Bill Murray and Andi McDowell and someone asks Phil Connor, Murray’s character about whether it will be six more weeks of winter and he says something about March 20… which is generally the Spring Equinox. People act like The Big Lebowski (1998) is a super zen movie, but if I had to think of a movie that might be an extended koan, it would be Groundhog’s Day.

When you wake up to the same day, day after day, written by the same death cult that gave us “Barbara Ann,” the only possible reaction is to eat as many pancakes as you can, kidnap a sacred rat, and drive headlong into the long light at the end of a tunnel. Embracing the fun may be the most zen moment you will ever have, over and over again.

re
peat
rep
eat
sew
so 
show
shovel
snow
go
sail
ing
go
leave
go
re
peat