Sometimes, it takes one mere note, a single line or verse, and you are immersed. Heartbreak, nostalgia, joy, hope...they all creep up like a serpent through your soul when an amazing song is on. And obviously, music is purely objective: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. A truly good song will haunt you, will raise the tiny hairs along the nape of your neck, your arms like static on a warm night. You may feel as though your heart is growing with the crescendos, beat by beat. I have been known to sob along with a particularly relevant song: Children by Robert Miles when Rhiannon was small, Nothing Else Matters by Metallica during a nasty breakup, Heaven by Beam and Yanou at the wedding of a childhood friend, Breathe Me by Sia at the finale of 6 Feet Under, etc...
Tonight, I am listening to Love Story redone on cello and piano by Jon Schmidt. A song I am quick to change when on the radio by a droning Taylor Swift, whose lyrics are as cheesy as my infamous chimichangas, but when played like this renders me speechless. The season finale of Scrubs showed JD with the movie screen of his future life in front of him, with Book of Love by Peter Gabriel (who is the master of inspirational epic songs) playing, and the waterworks were practically instantaneous.
Then there are the songs that are so remarkably upbeat and cheery, you are lifted into an absurdly inappropriately good mood. You could be in the midst of a funeral, surrounded by the bereaved, and if Feist's 1234 works its way into your head, like a relentless mole digging through my husband's vegetable garden, you cannot help but become a bobblehead with soul tapping feet. Likewise with almost any of Madonna's earlier material (circa 1984-85) How could one not want to don a tutu and fingerless gloves when Like a Virgin pipes through the minivan speakers in a traffic jam?
Nostalgia may be the most difficult when listening to music. The ache and yearning of the music, sawing away at your resolve to be grownup, cracking at aging bones to reveal a core of youthful marrow... when the song ends, you are stranded in this sea, feeling more than a little lost and confused. I find movie soundtracks to be the biggest culprits of this time robbery- many are soundtracks to movies that are forgettable or plain old rotten, but whose music producer knew their stuff.
And I suppose I am not the only one who has a long drive ahead of them, or mostly under their belt, winding through monotonous scenery, or nauseating mountain curves, making up the very soundtrack of their lives. Trying to pick music that as John Cusack so wisely states in "High Fidelity" begins great, gets better and then sinks a bit so as not to peak too soon. Would a snappy Cyndi Lauper fit into those teenage years, lightening the mood in the movie of my life when things were getting rough? And could we subtly add in some Bob Marley without seeming trite and posey? Is U2's Joshua Tree album overused, and would the Shiny Toy Guns be too obscure for the older crowd, who would be the ones who would buy the tickets to this slow moving life story. (the younger ones would be purchasing tickets to Wolverine 7, Twilight 5 or Zach Braff's remake of Grumpy Old Men)
In a way, the thing most amazing about music is the universal factor- that every one in the world has it to turn to in times of peril, strife, exhultation, ecstasy... regardless if your fondness lies in gospel, reggae, rap, rock, oldies, you know the escapism that comes along as a two for one when you turn on your radio for simple distraction. The native americans used music for rain, the africans have used it for rites of passage, women use it to pass through the hardest of labors, men use it in wartimes. And I, alone while my children sleep, am using it to pass minutes by until everything makes sense again.
Tonight, I am listening to Love Story redone on cello and piano by Jon Schmidt. A song I am quick to change when on the radio by a droning Taylor Swift, whose lyrics are as cheesy as my infamous chimichangas, but when played like this renders me speechless. The season finale of Scrubs showed JD with the movie screen of his future life in front of him, with Book of Love by Peter Gabriel (who is the master of inspirational epic songs) playing, and the waterworks were practically instantaneous.
Then there are the songs that are so remarkably upbeat and cheery, you are lifted into an absurdly inappropriately good mood. You could be in the midst of a funeral, surrounded by the bereaved, and if Feist's 1234 works its way into your head, like a relentless mole digging through my husband's vegetable garden, you cannot help but become a bobblehead with soul tapping feet. Likewise with almost any of Madonna's earlier material (circa 1984-85) How could one not want to don a tutu and fingerless gloves when Like a Virgin pipes through the minivan speakers in a traffic jam?
Nostalgia may be the most difficult when listening to music. The ache and yearning of the music, sawing away at your resolve to be grownup, cracking at aging bones to reveal a core of youthful marrow... when the song ends, you are stranded in this sea, feeling more than a little lost and confused. I find movie soundtracks to be the biggest culprits of this time robbery- many are soundtracks to movies that are forgettable or plain old rotten, but whose music producer knew their stuff.
And I suppose I am not the only one who has a long drive ahead of them, or mostly under their belt, winding through monotonous scenery, or nauseating mountain curves, making up the very soundtrack of their lives. Trying to pick music that as John Cusack so wisely states in "High Fidelity" begins great, gets better and then sinks a bit so as not to peak too soon. Would a snappy Cyndi Lauper fit into those teenage years, lightening the mood in the movie of my life when things were getting rough? And could we subtly add in some Bob Marley without seeming trite and posey? Is U2's Joshua Tree album overused, and would the Shiny Toy Guns be too obscure for the older crowd, who would be the ones who would buy the tickets to this slow moving life story. (the younger ones would be purchasing tickets to Wolverine 7, Twilight 5 or Zach Braff's remake of Grumpy Old Men)
In a way, the thing most amazing about music is the universal factor- that every one in the world has it to turn to in times of peril, strife, exhultation, ecstasy... regardless if your fondness lies in gospel, reggae, rap, rock, oldies, you know the escapism that comes along as a two for one when you turn on your radio for simple distraction. The native americans used music for rain, the africans have used it for rites of passage, women use it to pass through the hardest of labors, men use it in wartimes. And I, alone while my children sleep, am using it to pass minutes by until everything makes sense again.
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