Soundtrack of Our Lives Date Thursday, April 25, 2024 - 08:02 PM PST Topic Experiences Now and then, doing whatever with the radio on, I get tyo hear a song that so syncs with my thoughts, my emotions, or the surroundings that my life seems like a movie. Most often it's driving near the sunset or just thinking about a girl(as most songs are about life, death and love). Driving down the radio with Sting and the Police playing as I go through one of those 30-year-old rural neighborhoods with the worn wood fences that have turned elegant shades of ebony and burnt red, I think about a girl i don't even like. She's 16; Jewish, bipolar, hyperactive, and has a 22 year old boyfriend she sleeps with regularly who's in the Navy and shipping out to some gawdawful Island nation soon, but planning to marry her when he returns. I don't know why the song makes me think of them, but as I drive near that sunset on that rural road, I can feel the lonliness of the area seep out around me. Don't stand so close to me. Sometimes I feel like it's a metaphor for my life and the world. Cruisin' the streets with "Feeling Alright" going through every open window and out on to the street with the speakers loud, driving with one hand snapping in the air and clapping every now and then to scare other passengers. The casinos stand tall; and in the crevaces between the canyons created by them on a mere two-lane street, night is day, and day night. Crowded employees and gamblers and losers and debtors hustle along to the next bet, where things feel alive and I can feel the piano, the fast pace and the base line of the heart of society going at it with the vivacious and rough voice of a sixty-year-old Harlot. Riding in the afternoon twilight as the storm clouds pile over a hill like the crash of water over a sand castle as tide comes in at night, with the grayed sunlight pulsing over the road and the other clouds dancing and jumping and moving, "Dust in the Wind" plays. Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and sky-- and what more could one want? The sky is beauty, the eternal tapestry of the sun gods chase and hunt, the performance of the ballet of clouds and stars and moon. And earth; the silent audience bound to itself and unable to applaud, to participate, to even show appreciation. What it would be like to live forever and watch everything, would even then a single person understand the sky? I hope not. Every time I listen to classical, I feel the urge to just be. Where is not important; in fact, that is the delight of my subconscious wanderings while listening to the music itself. What it would have been like to be at a nobles party where this was played so many years ago; wearing the wigs and petticoats and uncomfortable clothing while speaking ignoble words in noble tones and despised languages to people I did not know. Listening to the music and doing courtly dancing; eating the fat of the land and drinking red wine from lead goblets. The good years. Other classical makes us think of nature; existentialism of man comes into debate when one listens to "Rodeo." The mule sidling up the lone stone path of the Grand Canyon, and that small river that runs through the base of it. Some of us live completely in the moment, and, with music, that can be the fullest existence there can be. This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=493