Giant Windmills or Windmill Giants

 

I wrote my first post about Don Quixote, windmills and giants back in 2006.  It was called Windmills or giants?  Then I created a new blog called Living the Life Quixotic and started a new blog in which I posted a paragraph a day from Don Quixote and tried to explain it. That didn't last long. 

I didn't repeat myself again until 2019 when I posted Once more into the windmill. Each time I posted an image of Don Quixote with my face crudely Photoshopped onto it. 

Then last in August 2024 I let Mothman carry the torch with Like a mothman to a flame. 

The last one was in my Mothman phase which I keep being drawn to like a moth to...well, you know.

Apparently that is true about Don Quixote, too. But now I can have ChatGPT recreate me as Don Quixote in a very realistic fashion. And since I look more and like Don Quixote as I age like a fine (if not corked) wine. Though in Cervantes' novel, Don Quixote was nearly 50 years old. But back then that was ancient. Medical science now makes many people linger into their 90s though they don't seem to be aware of why. 

I have tried to explain my fascination with Don Quixote many times over the years. Most of it seems to be that I used to fancy myself as a romantic looking for adventure and fighting windmills that just might be giants. Now I understand that Don Quixote was a parody of a bygone age that was nearsighted and attacking large structures because he was blind as a bat (and yes I know that isn't a woke phrase, but fuck it). 

Sometimes when aged rockers return to the stage I think they look a bit like Don Quixote putting on crusty old armor and trying to recapture the romance of their youth.  I wrote about seeing a Beach Boys concert maybe ten years ago and the one remaining Beach Boy just shuffled across the stage now and then while young musicians played all of the songs.

It's how I feel when I play my guitars at home and wonder what it would be like to be on stage. Then I picture me on an old plow horse charging a windmill and ending up on my butt in a field covered with mud and shit.  It puts things in perspective.  I still like to play my guitars. I just don't fantasize that anyone wants to hear or see me doing it. 

I don't know whether it would be harder or easier to have actually been a famous rocker in my youth. They tasted the addictive nectar of fame and then fade away. I just faded away. You can't reclaim something you never had.

After all, I'm no Ronald Reagan starting a new career in my 60s.

Thank god.