Don't Let Him Steal Your Heart Away
Today has been the Blessed Day of Weeping on the local soft rock station. The main speaker in the office is directly above my desk, so I've been spending the entire day transporting back and forth from the present to 1980, 1982, 1986-1989, etc. It's been draining to say the least.
You see, I used to be an emotional person. (Not like I am now, basically dead inside). I have developed quite an ability to time-travel back to the exact emotion I was feeling when certain songs were playing. I think that officially makes me a weirdo, but I'm still awaiting a ruling from the judges on that.
Top of the list today was a raft of tunes by Phil Collins, highlighting the tumultuous years while his first marriage was falling apart, when it fell apart and most of the time he spent picking up the pieces. Pain, dude. Capital P. And I was with him the entire way. I would, in the manner of millions of teenage girls, play his songs over and over and over (and over), crying tears for myself and for anyone who ever had to put up with another person who did not respect them or value their worth as a person to the fullest. So many of the lyrics spoke to me, almost as if they had been written around the time I needed to hear them and connect with them. I was mush personified.
I remember the day all that changed, and I don't have a song for that. Honestly, I don't think anyone could write a song conveying the import of the situation. It would seem trite to me, or somewhat less than it should, just a collection of notes and words, certainly nothing that would have the power to reach down into my core to soothe the pain of the one hundred thousand hot pokers residing there.
So now, I just idly play the 'year game' in the Jeep with the playlists. I can usually come within a year or two, but that's with stuff from 20-odd years ago. Funny, I was better at making the connection to songs when things were actually happening to me. Possibly that will happen again; one can always hope.
Hope didn't work out really well for Pandora though, did it?
posted by M. at 2:45 PM
1 Comments:
I used to get that feeling you're describing with songs, like the radio is wrenching your heart out, and like you, I can bring back the exact feelings upon hearing certain songs. Sometimes I wonder if there's a particular stage of human brain development - from around the early teens to the early twenties - where popular music somehow resonates deeper and more meaningfully in your mind, and you're more receptive to the emotion behind it. Those feelings - the ones you have when you strongly attach a memory to a song - are with you forever, imprinted permanently as landmarks in your emotional development.
But now? That emotional window is closed, at least for me. I find some current music catchy, but no more than that. I kind of miss how moved I used to be by songs.
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