The Memory of Music

~E~

It is almost overwhelming to me to realize how much music is embedded in my very bones. Scrolling through i-tunes searching for music to add to my ipod has led me on an emotional journey that I absolutely did not expect. I have alternately cried, danced and felt immeasurable joy as I tracked down the music that I've loved and listened to for my entire life.

This song takes me back to an age when my parents were friends with six or seven Venezuelan families - we would have them over for parties, they would dance, they would play instruments, they would sing, they treated me like an adult. ME-a very shy and awkward just-turned-teenager. JOY! It's been a pleasure returning to those parties in my mind and now realizing how amazing those people were.

That song carries me to the days when I would sit alone in my room and just listen endlessly to the radio and to my own music, purchased with babysitting money. I would agonize over what I might have done to make the cool kids ignore me so, dream of the day when I would be a rock star and show THEM who was the coolest, create worlds where I was the kind and attractive (OK, I was a kid!!) person who everyone liked. They would know what was in my heart automatically and they would appreciate me for what I was. Feeling betrayed by friends. Your typical teenage angst. AGONY.

This other song, well, SADNESS. "Forever Young" by Rod Stewart. My dad talked about this song a few times, how he was always shocked when he looked in the mirror to see the face he has now, not the young unlined face he imagined when he pictured himself. He hated his body getting old and failing him.

Ten years old and feeling like the world was a good place - that's where some of these songs took me. Hanging out at my friend's house, washing the car and being rewarded with a glass of iced tea. Climbing trees to the very very tippy top and freaking out when I looked down. Crawling through the woods playing spy. CONTENTMENT.

One more difficult one - PAIN and REGRET. The worst period of my life, when I loved and lost and hurt and feared, and wouldn't have minded much if I had died, I think.

DANCE! Those years that I spent going out dancing with friends, crowded dance floors, hot sweaty bodies with barely room to move but we managed somehow. A guy coming to the table and one by one asking us to dance, so very flattering to whoever was number 5 after everyone else declined. Getting home at 2 am and not being able to go to bed for another hour or two because you were too full of energy still.

I wonder, after this crazy day, what songs I hear in twenty years will bring me back to 2008, and what memories they will evoke.