Every now and then I have a cinematic music moment.
I suspect I'm not alone in this...let me try to explain this in a way which doesn't make me seem certifiable although in the minds of some, I may be a day late and a dollar short on that one. I sometimes find myself in a situation where there is something going on in my life and somehow a song just seems to magically appear on a radio or a stereo or whatever which is so appropriate to said situation that you feel like you're getting your own soundtrack like a character in a film. It's an amazing thing to me. Coincidental? Sure, but still really a cool experience. And memorable. And these cinematic music moments can really stick with me.
Some examples:
A few years ago I lost a friend under mysterious circumstances - none of us knew why he had passed away but he had always been a troubled guy so speculation was rampant. My wife and I were driving to his internment and we were talking but I was a million miles away trying to get my head around the whole situation. There was a lull in the conversation so I turned on the car stereo and the song that began to play was Tart by Elvis Costello from his When I Was Cruel album. The vibe of that song just locked in with the whole sad scene that grey afternoon and I can't hear that song to this day without being instantly transported back to that moment in time...and the feeling is tart.
Early in 2013 the small company I had worked for for most of my adult life was sold by the owners to a much larger competitor. If you've ever been through a situation like that, you can appreciate the amount of upheaval that is suddenly thrust upon you. People you have worked with for years lose their jobs, a new world order is imposed and if you are among the ones who get to go along for the ride, you just feel caught up in the maelstrom, looking for something to grab onto so you aren't swept away. A few months into this and I was just lost...exhausted from working long hours trying to survive the transition and my life was all out of balance - the things I needed to do to maintain equilibrium ( like listening to music ) were all pushed aside and while it appeared that I had achieved some kind of laser-like focus, I was adrift. Late one evening, I finally just collapsed onto the couch that inhabited my listening area and put on some music. My choice was indicative of my mindset-the melancholy and hangin' in against all odds Matthew Good and his album Avalanche. The title track seemed to nail down where I was at and what was going on around me in a way that was positively stunning. It was as though I had been sitting in a bar spilling my guts to Matt and he used me as inspiration. I can recognize a lifeline when one is tossed my way and I ended up listening to that album over and over as I navigated the whitewater of my professional life at that stage. I'm not sure if I could listen to it now...
Today, after work it happened again. After everyone else had left the building,I was exchanging notes with another one of the survivors of the previous regime, something which we had being doing off and on since the changing of the guard. As we stood outside in the parking lot in the cold while our cars warmed up and we slowly froze, the conversation turned into a bitch-fest as one would expect. We griped and grumbled and pined for the pastime paradise that in reality existed nowhere but in our minds right then and there. And we compared exit strategies as we described how fast and how far we would run if the lottery tickets we never purchased ever opened the door to a brave new world. But it was cold and so we wished each other well and went our separate ways. I walked over to my car and opened the door and that oh-so-familiar guitar riff reached out and gave me a slap across the chops and as the vocals kicked in I stood there like an idiot thinking
" No f'in way..."
Golden years...Go-ol-den...wop wop wop
Don't let me hear you say life
Is takin' you nowhere, angel...
What are you gonna do? You do what they do in the movies - you get into your car and you drive off into the sunset with a big goofy shit-eatin' grin on your face and The Soundtrack To Your Life cranked up as the credits roll and people get up and shuffle off to their own soundtracks. That's what.
Epiphanies, ironies...I'd love to hear about The Soundtracks To Your Lives...
D.D.
