The music is the massage.
Movement disorders having rendered me basically house-bound, I have lots of time on my hands and I spend it looking at or looking for things. Looking at things has meant perusing the written word or diving into any one of literally thousands of video streams. Looking for things means doing on-line family history records inquiries or googling something that catches my interest or pulling down info that could be helpful to my unemployed son or my college grad daughter as they make their way. And I bring some of it to this place both for their consideration and yours.
I’ve been climbing the family tree for a little over 14 years and I’ve been a parent for a little over 22 years. In conveying my legacy, I have despaired of a way to reconcile what I lived with what my children may know. My stories about things like sailing the Chesapeake or my silent encounter with LBJ’s Secret Service or inciting panic in the crew at an exploratory drilling site or being carried to incredible imaginary regions by a little bit of Chocolate Chip or my 4th Great Grand Uncles firing the first shot in the War for Texas independence are fun for all (I hope), but the relating is unique to me and distant by definition. Feeling third-person at best. It’s been a full-on plague of separation in that I could represent but I could not transport.
Until last night.
Transport is in the music. There are 434 titles in my vinyl collection and over 200 in my CD carousel, with little overlap between or within. It’s Amadeus to Zydico, folks, and it adds up to nearly 6,000 tracks, 1,300 some odd of which found their way onto my MP3 playlists. All it takes is to make a connection is to YouTube any track, any artist, or (almost) any year.
Wanna get some idea what it meant to be in the presence of Mance Lipscomb at the Rubaiyat in seedy South Dallas in 1969? YouTube it.
Wanna join with me and be hung from clouds by Alexander Scriabin (1872 – 1915)? YouTube it.
Wanna stroll through wonderland with me in 1958? YouTube it.
There’s a whole lotta piracy goin’ on over at YouTube, but then, in what kind of place would you expect to find me?
2/13/14