On Music in My Life:

Music is an important part of my life and always has been. When I was a child there was always music of all kinds around. Rock and Roll, Swing, Classical, Blues, Jazz, Country, Broadway Musicals, Church Hymns and Opera all graced the backdrop of my formative years at home. My grandmother played the piano and we would all stand around and sing when at her house. I was in the Band and Glee Club in school. Every holiday had its own music and songs to travel along with it through it’s calendar page each year.

I was the first kid in my town to have an AM/FM radio and was always on top of the latest trends even if I didn’t follow certain music myself I knew what was out there before the rest of my crowd. AM was where it was at, but FM was how they got there and I was on board. I was the one even adults in town came to, to find out what was new on the music front.

When I was a young adult and was doing the commune thing with friends and we lived with no electricity, we still had a battery radio and music.

Music has grown with me as time marched on, as current hits became oldies and new kinds of music emerged as popular chart toppers. My life became full of things and people and I no longer knew all the words to the latest songs. I still listened but I wasn’t the go to person anymore. FM had found it’s day and most people knew what I knew.

I still find the music on the edge or fringes and stop to hear them out but I don’t keep up with their names or buy near as much music as I ones did each year. Most all my music collection has been given away.

My computer has an eclectic group of music on it and the music player is on most of the time the computer itself is on. As the random selector picks and pulls at the threads of memories when it jumps the gaps of years from The Doors to Dido, Judy Collins to Mysteria, Vivaldi to Moody Blues, Johnny Cash to R. Carlos Nakai, Cyndi Lauper, Delerium, Bette Midler, ELO, REM, Jalan Jalan, Sarah McLachlan, Edvard Grieg, Fleetwood Mac to name a very few. All have meaning and memory attached that have nothing at all to do with the music itself.

Oldies are popular not just because the music is good but as a back drop to ones life it brings other times to mind. And my music selections tend to run through the past more then move on into the future like they once did. I am getting older and can only visit certain people in those times gone by. The new songs hold no memory of these people because they weren’t here anymore by the time these newer songs came out.

I am never without music running through my mind in the back of every thought. It connects my life together and is like the air I breathe to me.

Music is memory to me.