So, I have been thinking about music lately...I think about it a lot really. It is an interesting and vast subject on so many levels. I think about what music means to me, what strikes me about a certain artist or song, what attracts me to different genres, how it can move me to tears or laughter, how certain notes can resonate right down in my soul. How, for every time in my life there has been an artist or album I identify with that particular time...how I attach memories and meaning to it. How one line or riff can take me to places in myself I had otherwise forgotten existed. That is pretty powerful. And I wonder-is it like this for everyone? Do each of us have a soundtrack to our lives?
I remember getting my bright yellow Walkman for Christmas, the kind that would switch the side of the tape with the switch of the button-and that was important since my parents would only allow me to purchase singles of such CRAZY artists as Gun's and Roses. From that moment on, I had headphones on everywhere I went!
I can't tell you what year this song or that album came out, but I could tell you in detail what I felt when I first heard it-because every time I hear it again it's like the first time...I was watching my favorite channel...cool T.V. last night and REM's Loosing My Religion came on... And I was instantly transported back to grades 6 and 7 when my own musical obsessions began to take hold. I had a dry erase board in my room and it was filled with artists and albums I wanted to buy-Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, REM, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Smashing Pumpkins, Hole, Everclear and later there was Goldfinger and Bad Religion, then Tool, the Deftones, Ani Difranco, Incubus- I could list them forever... I remember taking my well earned paper route money to buy my first stereo for my room, and going to the store as often as my parents would allow to get another album on my list. Going to my room was never a punishment because I would sit in there and listen to music for hours on end... I went to sleep with it on, I woke up with it on...I would sneek my headphones on the bus with me. I created my own world and found bliss within those notes...
I remember opening my first microphone and the big Sony professional headphones for my birthday-I had to have been all of eight maybe- and my dad set up a tape deck and I got a mixer, I would sing and record and there was a freedom of creativity there that I have not matched within myself since... the years went by and my self consciousness over took me and I stopped singing, except for in my car by myself, or ridiculously out of range with a few friends. I started writing a lot, and I got involved in the local music scene as a teenager. It has been amazing to witness other people's creative processes, glistening in the light of creation and collaboration... And then I think about how I stifled my own, I let fear extinguish that inner creative fire. For a time I stifled it all together, I quit listening to new music or taking an interest at all. But recently, in the last year or so, I have begun to re-open that musical file in my brain. I found that inspired feeling again and I want to figure out what to do with it... I think we all wander in the gray areas of life- we transition from one stage to another- and if we are not careful we loose the awareness of what it is that touches us deeply in our soul. The beauty of it is that if we are vigilant, we may wander, but we are never lost. That fire within your soul can be re kindled -like a phoenix rising up from the embers to re-emerge in a different and perhaps more amazing form...
