Elevator Music

LOAD.


Head: What are you blubbering about?
Heart: I'm not. I'm....fine.
Head: You have snot dripping from your nose to your chin. That's not a good look for you.
Heart: I don't want to talk about it.
Head: Oh, come on, you are always telling me to open up...here's your chance...It's okay...I won't make fun of you or judge. You can trust me.
Heart: Really?
Head: I'm still here...
Heart: Okay... I was listening to the radio, and that song came on..and, I don't know, I just...I started thinking about her...and I just couldn't help it...that was "our song"...and then this huge wave of emotion washed over me.
Head: Yeah, I see that....A huge wave of...snot. I think I get it, though.
Heart: You do? Really?
Head: Totally. I totally get it. I get why you are crying. You are...A Vagina... I bet it was a Dan Fogelberg song...Stop listening to "Light FM" before you grow tits, and start hosting Scentsy parties.
Balls: Seriously...How many months until football season?
Heart: You Fucking Savages.


WASH.


I can't help it, but I look at my watch every time I hear it.
It starts with the first syncopated guitar riff, an introduction to the man and his mood. It's a strange sound for a rock guitarist, it's older somehow, classic, timeless. Then comes the lyric, the let-me-set-the-stage exposition that pulls you right into some love-struck Romeo's story. He's laying it bare: His hopes, his dreams, his love. He's in that place where every emotion is raw, fully realized, and complete. He's singing about a girl. The singer drives into the rhyme, feeling every sharp pang. There's something in his voice that is visceral, an incantation, a drawing in of kindred spirits. "Do you know this pain?", he seems to ask me, knowing that the pounding rhythm of the six-string is painting the picture even more than the words. Ah, but the lyrics...They are the book of a life that didn't pan out, a deal that went bad, a love affair that had no place or time to blossom.
I get sucked in. I make connections to my own life, my own experience, my own Juliet. I sing the chorus like I wrote it, a jilted lover trying to find the magic words to bring her back to that place, that somewhere. I feel every stabbing betrayal again, and I invent new ones to keep the story fresh. We are angry, he an I, a pair of love-busted street buskers hustling songs in the dark because we crapped out in the biggest game of our lives, and there she goes, living her life without us.
Yet, while I am railing on about pretty strangers taking my place, he's on to something bigger.
He's reconciled the pain, and replaced it with forgiveness, a wisdom that is granted only to those fortunate enough to bet it all on love, only to have it blow up in their face. She's long gone now, maybe an acquaintance at best, maybe just a phone number in his wallet, but once, she cried when they made love, an explosion in his heart that was bigger than any act of betrayal.
"There's a place for us, (I know you know this song)," he says, and I do, like the stars above, I know every note, and every twisted, cathartic lesson. I just listen as he reminds me that there is a place for us; Somewhere.
I can't help it, but I look at my watch every time I hear it.



RINSE.



I'm sitting at my desk waiting for Rajiv, or whatever his name is, to come back on the line. He's there in the background, I can hear him typing and can see the cursor start to move. I know that his name is not Bill, as he introduced himself, and his Midwestern American dialect tapes are not having the desired effect. He is attempting to debug my Facebook-virus-infected computer, and he is taking his sweet time. I assume it's taking so long because there is a ten second latency in the chat window as my responses are travelling all the way to India, or Bangladesh, or perhaps even Pakistan. I am not surprised when he types a request: "May I put you on hold?" Sure thing, I say, I'm enjoying my day off from making money. There's a click, then several pops as the phone system places me in the hold queue. I'm in the land of nothing, stuck on the phone.
Several seconds pass, then the music starts. At first, I don't recognize the tune, it is hidden in the gentle instrumental arrangement. There is a flute, and a harp, and some muted strings, but the dead give aways are the continuously rising lyrical passages, and the mysterious, yet inviting playing of the lute. It makes sense to me that the song has been Muzak'd, it is a beautiful, popular, and a ubiquitous part of Western culture. I imagine the Muzak guys back at the studio, jumping at the chance to rearrange the "Greatest Rock and Roll Song of All Time". The harpist is really cooking, the flautist blowing pure notes as the approaching climatic solo pass begins to take shape. The lute player channels all of the pent-up aggressive energy of the lute gods as he launches into a staggering, incendiary solo. Always rising to this climactic moment, the culmination of seven or eight minutes of build up, I sing the words while being driven by the pounding beat of the hammered dulcimer:

"And as we wind on down the road,
Our shadows taller than our soul
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all is one and one is all, yeah
To be a rock and not to roll."

And then Bill-Rajiv has fixed my com-puter....



SPIN.


I was talking to my friend Kurt the other day about the power of music. He thought it would be really cool if we got to have a personal soundtrack to accompany us around in our daily lives, a track list of songs that we could have playing in our heads that would color the way we thought, or felt, or behaved.
I liked his idea, but when I started thinking about it, I determined that I already had a soundtrack. It consists of songs that were playing when I actually experienced life, and when I hear them today, I am propelled back to that moment, and I get to feel those emotions all over again. Some of them are hard to listen to, they are reminders of dark times that haven't been placed in the "I'm done with all of that" pile. Songs like Wasted Time by The Eagles, with it's brutal truths are just too much sometimes, and they are respected, yet avoided, unless public crying becomes acceptable. There are a few untouchables, the ones to be avoided lest we cause a scene.
There are some songs that will send me into a reverie before the first measure is complete. The intro starts and I am there, in that place, my mind instantly detailing the scene. Bob Marley's Is This Love? reminds me of a too-small bed, in a too-small house with strangely rounded walls. On occasion, I am transported back to a lonely bike ride on a barren road in Alaska, just me, the bears in the distance, a bald eagle flying overhead, while the Grateful Dead play Sugar Magnolia. If you have somehow missed that, you should try it. Peace will come to you.
One day, hopefully many years from now, I can have some kid press a button on an antique eight-track player, and I'll cross over to the other side while Pink Floyd's The Great Gig In the Sky accompanies me across the water. That would suit me just fine, but go ahead and crank it, just in case.