When I updated my blog header last month, one of my favorite features ended up on the cutting room floor. In a fit of pique, I got rid of the little embedded music player from Playlist.com when I forgot my password and the site made it extraordinarily difficult to retrieve it.
I admit I kind of miss it. It was fun to link the music that it played with the subject of my blog posts. I played Tom Lehrer's "Masochism Tango" when I wrote about the final, PAINFUL, stages of finishing my master's thesis. I played "Der Fuhrer's Face" when I wrote about my Dad's time in the 8th Air Force during World War II. I played Jimmy Buffett's "A**hole Song" when I posted about AT&T. It was fun. But the music could actually prove counterproductive since the older I get the harder it is for me to concentrate on writing while music is playing. It didn't used to be that way, but along with sagging boobs, disappearing shoulders, and painful joints, I guess it just goes with the process of aging.
But I LOVE music. I always have. There's a reason why every movie has a soundtrack. Music is the soundtrack of our lives. It always amazes me how a single song can instantly transport me back to a place and time that I never think about until those first few notes begin to play. Suddenly it's as if I'm there again--I can hear and see things I haven't heard or seen in decades--things that no longer exist. I can feel the way I felt then. The years simply evaporate and all of a sudden, I'm there.
I get it naturally. Both my parents loved music and I was raised in a home where it was always playing. Ever since I can remember, the stereo held pride of place in our house. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the first thing they ever bought; it was certainly always the biggest. This is a photo of the first one I remember (incidentally, the photo was taken at Randy's and my first apartment--they had purchased a better, bigger one by the time we married, and we were lucky enough to get the old one. We didn't have a couch, but by golly we had a stereo!)
Some of my fondest and earliest memories are of the music that came out of that stereo on Saturday nights. My childhood Saturdays were special. Our next door neighbors, the Joneses, were my Mom & Dad's best friends. They had a daughter, Susan, who was about my age and she was one of my best friends. Saturday nights meant that stereo would be playing at "the threshold of pain" while all the grownups sat around visiting over glasses of beer and whatever munchies they happened to have on hand. We kids got to stay up late and play outside to the strains of Hawaiian music (my mother was a great fan since she'd lived in Honolulu as a child) or Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald or Sammy Davis, Jr. or Glenn Miller. Or Mitch Miller. To this day, the song "If you knew Susie, like I know Susie" takes my breath away--I can still hear my Dad singing it to me.
Once I hit the teenage years, my soundtrack changed. I still loved my parents' music, but now the Monkees, the Doors, Cream, and the Beach Boys took center stage. Later on they'd be joined by John Denver, Chicago, Jim Croce, and many others. Even now, all these decades later, certain songs will stop me in my tracks, reminding me of singular moments in my life.
I hear "Higher and Higher" by Jackie Wilson, and I'm suddenly driving a car for the very first time, long before it was legal for me to do so, because Daddy thought he was having a heart attack and he wanted me to drive him to the doctor. Have no idea how I made it, but I did. And he did too. But I worried about him for the rest of his life.
I hear John Denver's "Calypso" and I'm standing outside a store in Swansea, Wales, smelling the sea air and looking at my first Welsh love spoon--a gift from my first real hearthrob, Lynn Williams. I still have it. (The spoon, I mean:-)
I hear "You Make Me Feel Brand New" by the Spinners, and I'm dancing with the love of my life at Disneyland, wondering if he's going to be "the one." He was.
I hear "Longer" by Dan Fogelberg and I'm struggling up the stairs to work at the Administration Building at BYU, eight months pregnant with my second child, and marveling at my good fortune to be married to my best friend and bringing another healthy baby into the world.
I hear "El Nino Querido" by the King's Singers and I'm standing at my kitchen window, washing dishes and gazing across the Bay of Cadiz at the lighthouse in Rota while my children make graham cracker gingerbread houses on the table nearby. Bliss. Complete. Total. Utterly perfect. Bliss.
Nowadays I have to be a tad careful about the music I listen to. Some of the songs I just mentioned will bring me to tears, so I balance the sad ones with lots of upbeat stuff. I managed to make it through Randy's funeral with a liberal dose of ZZ-Top--again, at the "threshold of pain"--for an hour or so before the service. When I'm lonely and missing the west, I play a lot of Jimmy Buffett. On Sundays, when I'm hanging out with my favorite dead people, my music of choice is vintage 40's stuff with a smattering of the Smothers Brothers for good measure--they were another perennial favorite of my folks.
So here's a photo of my mom sitting in front of that new stereo they bought when it was many years old--you can see the thing is MASSIVE. And, just for ducks, I bit the bullet and put the music player back in. With a few of my favorites. Enjoy!
