The Importance of Music
This idea is completely stolen from a blog post I read this morning entitled The Importance of Sitting In One Place and Reading. Although the concept is borrowed, the idea behind it all has been ruminating in my head for a while now.
Sometime late last year, I fell into a new habit. After finishing dinner, I would lie on my couch and listen to an entire record, uninterrupted. I'd move from Dylan to Oldham and The Faces to Tim Easton. Most of the time I would close my eyes. I would find myself falling into the stories, the romance, the longing, the fury. My cell phone would be in the other room. For forty minutes to an hour I would do nothing but listen. And dream.
The idea came from specific memories when music changed me. There was the beach in Ponte Vedre, Florida when Son Volt's "Back Into Your World," accompanied by a rising sun and a girl I loved altered my senses. There was the cliff in Pacifica, CA when The Arcade Fire's "Intervention" charged through my core. There were the fields and hills of Brussels and Emmylou Harris' Red Dirt Girl. There was the almost incomparable beauty of The Henry Miller Library, drooping trees and Emmett Kelly and Will Oldham harmonizing on "Lions Lair." And of course, Club de Ville in Austin when Slobberbone covered Neil's "Powderfinger" and changed my perspective on just about everything.
Music can do all of this. And more. Yes, it can provide quick distractions and comfort on a bus ride, a walk to work or a trip to the market, but it can also inject something into us or reveal areas once unknown. In the late 90s, I used to sing Marah's "Formula, Cola, Dollar Draft" as if my life was the song. I wanted to drink "muskie moons on top of Laurel Hill.... on the fifth day, of the fifth month, at five o'clock in the dawn." I needed to "roll down the highway, doin' it my way, whislin' "Someday" and signing this song." And for a few years, it's what I did, because "there was a time when I didn't talk. I'd look away or I'd shrug it off. Tune it our or turn it off." And as I finish this writing and listen to this song, I feel it all, twelve years later.
Sometime late last year, I fell into a new habit. After finishing dinner, I would lie on my couch and listen to an entire record, uninterrupted. I'd move from Dylan to Oldham and The Faces to Tim Easton. Most of the time I would close my eyes. I would find myself falling into the stories, the romance, the longing, the fury. My cell phone would be in the other room. For forty minutes to an hour I would do nothing but listen. And dream.
The idea came from specific memories when music changed me. There was the beach in Ponte Vedre, Florida when Son Volt's "Back Into Your World," accompanied by a rising sun and a girl I loved altered my senses. There was the cliff in Pacifica, CA when The Arcade Fire's "Intervention" charged through my core. There were the fields and hills of Brussels and Emmylou Harris' Red Dirt Girl. There was the almost incomparable beauty of The Henry Miller Library, drooping trees and Emmett Kelly and Will Oldham harmonizing on "Lions Lair." And of course, Club de Ville in Austin when Slobberbone covered Neil's "Powderfinger" and changed my perspective on just about everything.
Music can do all of this. And more. Yes, it can provide quick distractions and comfort on a bus ride, a walk to work or a trip to the market, but it can also inject something into us or reveal areas once unknown. In the late 90s, I used to sing Marah's "Formula, Cola, Dollar Draft" as if my life was the song. I wanted to drink "muskie moons on top of Laurel Hill.... on the fifth day, of the fifth month, at five o'clock in the dawn." I needed to "roll down the highway, doin' it my way, whislin' "Someday" and signing this song." And for a few years, it's what I did, because "there was a time when I didn't talk. I'd look away or I'd shrug it off. Tune it our or turn it off." And as I finish this writing and listen to this song, I feel it all, twelve years later.
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