Think about a pivotal moment in your life and I bet that you will find that there is a melody attached to it. A specific song that was playing at the time something important or exciting happened. A piece of music devoted to a profound or melancholy experience. Perhaps it was something that changed the way you viewed the world or significantly impacted your life. Music has a way of forever defining a moment, a space in time, a person or an event.
From the beginning, it was always about the music for my husband and me. It all started with a few record albums and a turntable. My husband loves music. When we started dating he would often play album after album for me while we sat and talked. After we were married we continued to spend many evenings on our deck listening to music with each other or with our friends. Often times we would take turns selecting the next album to play. We would wait in expectation to see if the other person could guess which artist we had selected. We would do this for hours while we discussed life and our plans for the future.
Throughout the years, the many dogs, the babies-turned-children-turned-adults, music has been constant in our home. Neither of us can play an instrument or even sing a note but music has always been in the background of our lives. It was not uncommon for Bruce Springsteen to wake us up early on Saturday morning. Or for John Cougar and Lynyrd Skynyrd to work alongside us in the backyard. U2 and Jimmy Buffet provided our entertainment on Saturday evenings.
This past Saturday night we found ourselves on the deck once again, this time with an iPod and a blue tooth speaker. Our daughter joined us and continued the round-robin tradition of choosing the upcoming music. This time we each picked just one song to be played next. Still, the three of us looked at each other in anticipation for the reaction to the next song that would be played.
My daughter’s first pick was Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song. This really surprised me until she said it was in a recent soundtrack from a movie that she loved. The interesting thing about playing this quirky game is that each song is also the beginning of a conversation. It’s an opportunity to share a memory or a story. It is a connection that we may not have made otherwise. It is your first high school football game. Your first big win. Your first big loss. It is joy and celebration and quiet solitude. It is all of these things rolled into a three-minute recording.
Never underestimate the power of music. It is like therapy for your soul. It has the ability to bring us together and create bonds. Music fuels our minds and our creativity. Whether you listen with an iPod or you still have record albums and a turntable we all can benefit from a little background music.
