Sweet Thing

I really need to keep up on the blogging, don't I? Sorry, all. Things are just so crazy.

Well, I'm lying in bed, where I've been all day, all alone and listening to music. Dan's still in Arizona, and I didn't have classes today. I should have done homework, but I didn't. Slept in till 2:00, then spent the rest of the day hunting down new music to listen to. It gets harder and harder for me to find music that I connect to emotionally. I remember how I felt when I first heard, say, Jeff Buckley's Grace or Van's Astral Weeks. (Appropriate examples as I am currently listening to Jeff's cover of Sweet Thing). I'm starting to wonder if I just can't connect to music the same way I did when I was 16. Was my intense sensitivity to the emotional impact of music - my ability to be completely taken over and uplifted by melody- gone now that I'm not an emotionally-driven, hormonal mess of a teenager? Or have I just not heard the right music since then? I suppose it's not gone, it's harder and harder to find. I don't like much of the new music I hear. Now I just have to spend hours and hours sifting through all the new music to find something that will stick with me, that I feel I'll be able to listen to over and over again. One of the challenges of this process, though, is that I much prefer the oft-trodden and familiar songs to new songs. The feeling of listening to a really good song for the second time is nothing to listening to Sweet Thing for the 300th time. So sometimes I don't listen to good music just because I don't know it, because it's not familiar to me yet. But how can it become familiar if I don't listen to it? This is often to my detriment, let me tell you. When I first bought "Rush of the Blood to the Head" by Coldplay, somehow I decided that I didn't like the song Green Eyes. So I always skipped it. Always. For 3 or 4 years I skipped that song. All the sudden, one day I pull that album out again, listen to it all the way through, and realize that Green Eyes is perhaps my favorite song on the album.

Our family loves music, and it's one of the things I love most about my family. Spending time this last week with my family reminded me of that. It took me some time to realize that the rest of the world didn't like music as much as we do. Not everyone will have memories of sitting in the garden listening to Sweet Thing with Gordon, and raising our hands to the night time sky when Van sung it. Or having a transcendent moment in the garden before leaving for Italy, listening to "Rain in July"while it was raining in July. :) Certainly one thing that brought Daniel and I together was a strong, inexplicably strong connection to music. And while not all of us can produce music, at least all of us can connect over finding it an incredibly meaningful and joyful part of our lives. I've always felt I was a musician that somehow got cheated out of musical talent - but now I am content with the thought that while I will never be able to make music, at least I can be understanding and supportive of those around me that are more musically-inclined.

So there's lots to post about my trip to AZ, but I have yet to order my thoughts (and my pictures) in order to do it justice. So I'll save that for the next installment.