Déjà vu, perhaps; perhaps not …

When I was fairly young, I had a “baby sitter” – somebody who would come over to the house to make sure nothing tragic happened while my parents were off at some event or another – who tried to teach me guitar.  She wasn’t much older than me, I can’t remember if she was old enough to drive at the time, but I do remember that she taught me how to play “House of the Rising Sun” in one evening.  I’m sure I promptly forgot how to play the song by the end of Sunday.  I wouldn’t bring this up except that I wound up going to school in New Orleans and was living in a shotgun rental house when President Ronald Reagan was shot in Washington DC in 1981.  Of course, I’m not certain my future in music had anything to do with the life rhythms of Ronald Reagan, but perhaps there are things we just don’t get until “later”.  My older brother had  often told me of how he had experienced the time immediately after President John F. Kennedy was shot, and I realized that it was a pretty significant marking point, generationally speaking.  You either remember the house when the sun is rising, or you’ll see it at sunset …