Lost In A Song

Music has always, always, always been my mainstay. My idea of hell would be a place inaccessible to music, although then I’d likely subject people to my voice (which might be their version of hell, but ya never know.)

From my teen years on, I’ve followed music through so many incarnations. All teens did, so far as I knew. Love lost & found, dreams won & vacated, moves voluntary & not so much. I danced, not well, with an eye to how others would see me…which isn’t the way to dance at all. Cuz if you can’t abandon your body to the music, it isn’t very satisfying dancing.

Later in life, as a married woman, a “working jerk” in offices, an obedient soul paying taxes to The Man, for years I listened to classical music. Once I read that this genre is really limited – after all, it was stiffly specific to its timeline & there were only so many composers. The radicals of classical music sound rigidly controlled today. Music is art for the ears & what aficionados these are!

Now rock just burgeoned into so many branches from its hip-twitching bluesy roots, like folk, grunge, head-banger, stadium, Brit Invasion, death metal, hard, progressive, psychedelic, rockabilly, southern, surf, & more.

I never had an 8-track, but for a long period, my reel-to-reel was a great weekend’s occupation, taping hours of music, putting together mixes, selecting records, cueing them up, adjusting a sequence, headphones snugged on, crooning along. If I started naming the individuals & bands that dressed me up, I’d add about two dozen pages to this blog, so let’s leave that & move on.

Of course, music that inspires me is always a leading thread. Some Broadway shows have music which pulled me up from my seat to march or crushed me down to weep. “Funny Honey” from Chicago, and “Bound To You” from Burlesque were two of this latter. And then there’s “Never Enough” from The Greatest Showman. But my truest favorites rest with songs with beefy drums laying a road I simply MUST dance down.  

In the past three days, after discovering ‘The Greatest Showman,’ I have been listening repetitively (or more accurately, obsessively) to the soundtrack. If you haven’t heard it, check the web to find a rendition, check out the movie, but don’t miss it. I defy you to stay seated once it starts!

So many songs rip out my heart & return it, raggedly, unapologetically, bleeding to my hands (“Who Wants to Live Forever”, Freddie Mercury), (“Comfortably Numb”, Pink Floyd). “Here,” they seem to convey,” you deal with it, I’m done for now.” And the next track begins while I’m contemplating whether my healthcare will cover this fresh wound. But I have to say for all the drip, I love these kinds of songs. I love having my emotions stirred as though someone has put a blender fork into my psyche, turning both to high.

I love that people are visual, that there is art to look at. I enjoy food a great deal – nothing like a South Philly Cheese Steak to set the taste buds dripping. I enjoy silence so deep that the chirp of a bird sounds as though a cannon has gone off in the next yard. But, ah! Music! “This Is Me,” “This Is The Greatest Show” – what anthems for a life bestirred from meditation to a blown-apart, scintillate conversation with your own soul about who you are & why you’re here.

Today is another opportunity to dance my way through, to be uplifted into blessing, as in “I’m Changed” sung by Angel Travis at Agape Church, or almost anything by Peter Mayer, or “The Cape” by Guy Clark, “I Dreamed of Rain” by Jan Garrett & JD Martin – all of these I’ve mentioned are available via internet. Check some out when you’re ready to go “splorin’” the dusty corners of your soul. They’ll chase off the blues like dry leaves pursued by a leaf-blower. Find music which’ll lift off the top of your head & screw it down differently, that’ll get your hips rockin’, to shake your shoulders, semaphore your arms, stop crash-landing short of whiplash nodding your head.

Live on! Sing on! Dance on! Be inspired. As Peter M sings, “Everything Is Holy Now!”

Love to all –

Carol