The Time Machine Known as Music

I'm having an affair. 

It's been a lifelong thing, really, and I'm so head-over-in-heels in love.

Now before you think this is some racy, adulterous admission,

it's just not. 

The love affair I'm talking about is the one I have with music. 

It started when I was young . . . and once I fell in love,

there was no going back.

Music became my muse. 

My therapy. My escape. My sanity. My celebration. My release.

My voice when my own couldn't find the words . . .

Have you experienced this?

The overwhelming, soul-consuming powerful force that is music?

On more than one occasion, I have been driven to tears by the lyrics of a song,

the sound of a melody.

When I was sixteen, I got a speeding ticket on the highway . . .

and I still blame Prince. 

I had been driving home from my job at the mall, 

and I was listening to Delirious.

The song was so incredibly full of life and energy and ecstasy that I had to crank up the volume and dance. 

The club beat pulsated through the speakers of my dad's 1992 Pontiac Bonneville. 

I get delirious whenever you're near
Lose all self control baby just can't steer
Wheels get locked in place
Stupid look on my face

I sang at the top of my lungs and pictured myself in a music video,

and then a dance club,

and then my thoughts drifted to the boy who had turned me on to the song,

and well . . .

the red and blue lights of the police car behind me interrupted what would have come next. 

But I know to this day it would've been good.

I had gotten so lost in the song and the world it created for me that I must have driven a bit over the legal posted speed. 

Lose all self control baby just can't steer

Yup. Literally.

I was inspired to ramble on about all of this because of a song that popped up on my shuffle this morning as I work away at my desk . . .

From the first note, a tidal wave of nostalgia hit me,

and I had no choice, no say, I was powerless to fight it.

I was instantly taken back in time and I don't even know if I closed my eyes,

but despite being in my chair, at my desk,

it wasn't my office I saw anymore. 

The first note was all it took . . . 

and then the sound of Christine McVie's voice flooded my mind with even more memories.

I was standing in the corner of the tiny dorm room I inhabited in 1999.

Columbia, Missouri.

The walls were purple and my steps squeaked from the water squishing between my shower shoes and my feet. 

I had a towel turbaned on my head and a toothbrush poking out of the pocket of my bathrobe. 

I don't know why, but every morning when I would get ready for class,

I would listen to Fleetwood Mac's Everywhere. 

And because of it,

for the rest of time,

I will always always be taken back to 1999, to that Mizzou dorm room whenever I hear that song. 

There are so many other songs that are linked to memories like this for me.

I can still name all of the songs on the mixed tape I got from my first real high school crush.

No matter how much time passes, if Del Amitri's Roll to Me happens to play,

I can sing all of the lyrics.

Blind Melon No Rain means I'm sitting on Susan Tibbetts' roof, with our gang of friends, doing nothing really but having the time of our lives.

Train Hey Soul Sister will always make me smile, reflexively, as I think about LG and Count and law school.

Dave Matthews Crash was the soundtrack for my drive to Ripon to visit my high school/early college boyfriend. 

The Righteous Brothers You've Lost That Loving Feeling means a road trip to a Haunted House in Green Bay with my besties crammed in the backseat and a bunch of the football team in the back of my Dad's Jeep serenading us.

I could go on and on . . . forever really.

I love my love affair with music.

I love what music means to my soul and the emotions it can stir up in my heart.

And most of all,

I love the memories I will be able to share with my daughter as she gets older,

because a song comes on the radio,

and a part of my life's story is replayed for me. 

I hope her story has it owns soundtrack someday . . .

life is damn beautiful but somehow everything is just a little bit sweeter when there's a song playing in the background.