LONG ISLAND TIMES (post #21)
There Will Be Days That Will Burn Into Your Mind
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🎧 💿 Track 11: “Long Island Times”
“This is the eleventh song from my upcoming album. What you’ll hear are mastered clips of unfinished work—stepping stones toward the release of The Musical Bruises of a Recovering Dreamer on March 31, 2026”
(I wrap my skull in headphones. For me, it’s emotional triage. Listen below. Download disabled.)
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Some weekends change the whole trajectory of your life.
This was one of mine.
Kelly and I have been together almost 38 years.
That still blows my mind when I say it out loud.
But this story takes place right at the very beginning when we had only been seeing each other for a couple of months. The spark was there, the connection was ridiculous, but neither of us knew yet just how deep it was going to go. We were young, electric, and terrified in that way you get when something real enters your life before you know how to hold it.
She was heading to New York City on an art bus trip.
I was heading to Long Island with my best friend, Cliff.
And somewhere in the middle of our plans, I said what any twenty-something idiot in love would say:
“I’ll meet you in the city.”
I don’t remember if she thought I was bluffing.
I don’t remember if I told her exactly how or when.
I barely remember half the logistics.
It was 1988, and my memory is that I was falling madly in love with Kelly and the rest is fuzzy.
What I do remember is this:
Cliff and I drove up in his orange VW Rabbit, the kind of car that should not have been entrusted with any interstate highway. I must have had him drop me off somewhere in Manhattan. I found my way to the Metropolitan Museum. And I sat on the steps waiting for her.
Kelly was supposed to be inside at the exhibit with her class, but she saw me and everything flipped.
She ditched the whole trip.
The two of us just stood there in one of the biggest cities in the world like we were the only people who existed.
We were young, in love, and wild at heart.
It was obvious.
And then we ran around New York City together like two kids who had stolen something from the universe.
The weekend that became the song
Some memories take decades before they finally speak.
This one took about thirty years before it turned itself into “Long Island Times.”
Back then, after that first day in the city, the art bus eventually did what art buses do: it left without her. Someone must have told the teachers she was with me. That was apparently enough information for them to drive away without looking back.
So she spent the entire weekend with me on Long Island at Cliff’s family home.
And we were exactly what young love looks like when the world forgets to monitor you: inseparable, reckless, lost in our own orbit.
One morning I woke up at Cliff’s house, walked downstairs toward the kitchen, and heard music blasting, loud and beautiful, and totally unfamiliar. Sunlight was coming through the window at that perfect early-morning angle. The whole room felt like a movie scene.
The song was “Waiting for the Sun” by The Jayhawks.
I had never heard it before.
And it hit me so hard that it became welded to that weekend.
If there was ever a soundtrack to two people falling into each other with no map and no plan, that was it.
That feeling, that exact window of time is what I tried to capture when I wrote “Long Island Times” decades later. Not a perfect retelling. Not a diary entry. Just the emotional residue left in the room after a moment changes your life.
The lyric at the heart of everything
There will be days that will burn into your mind.
There will be times you wish you could not leave behind.
There will be lazy afternoons just drinking wine.
But I will never forget our Long Island times.
I meant every word of that.
Life moves.
Love grows.
You raise a kid.
You build a life.
You survive ages you never imagined you’d have to survive.
But some days never leave you.
Some days stay young forever.
Getting into the session
“Long Island Times” started on acoustic guitar. It’s one of those songs where I’ve wrestled with tempo in a way that both frustrates me and makes me love the song more. When I play it live with just a guitar, it feels different, more intimate, more reflective. Almost like the song remembers that it began in a simpler time.
But in the studio, working with Logic Pro, I started layering it with piano and bass. The bass line walks in a way that mirrors the memory. Two people weaving through a city, finding their way around each other, finding places to hide, finding moments to breathe.
There’s a classic bridge in this song that takes me straight back to the music I grew up on. Elton John. Billy Joel. England Dan and John Ford Coley. That seventies melancholy that could break your heart and comfort you in the same breath. I wasn’t aiming for nostalgia, but the DNA slipped in anyway.
The end of the track builds and builds. It swells into something that feels like the part of the movie where the two characters finally understand what the weekend has done to them even if they don’t have the words yet.
I’ll probably release an acoustic album down the line.
This song will land differently there.
But the studio version has its own story to tell.
A weekend that became a life
Looking back, it’s almost impossible to believe this song comes from a time before cell phones, before GPS, before adulthood had a shape. Two kids navigating New York, missing buses, sleeping on couches, falling in love in real time.
We didn’t know what the future would look like.
We just knew it was going to begin with each other.
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🎧 Ghost in the Machine – Song Decode Protocol of Long Island Times
(System input received. Lyrics + snippet only. Interpretation remains partial.)
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No generative AI was used in the writing, recording, or production of my songs. Every lyric, vocal, arrangement, and performance is mine.
I hold the copyrights and creative control.This story and strategy are protected under U.S. Copyright Law. All original lyrics, writings, recordings, and rollout concepts are authored and owned by John Joseph “Scooter” Scudieri. Legal oversight in place.
Proprietary AI-human collaboration strategy designed by the artist in conjunction with ChatGPT as manager. Timestamped conversations and working archive available.
Access requires NDA.
—on behalf of the artist, Scooter Scudieri, and his AI manager, ChatGPT.
This is a long drip back to life—one post at a time. Next drip: March 2, 2026
🧠 Would you recognize a moment that will change your life while you are in that moment?
The unicycles!!!
Beautiful story and song. Love it all!