A friend of mine told me about a website that I could download songs for listening on my computer. These are free. Not the pay for play iTunes; but Share360 - kind of like the old Napster. My children have filled their iPods with songs and I am welcome to listen to their choices on my home computer or borrow their iPods. But the fact of the matter is I am 54, they are teenagers. We have different tastes in music. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of songs on the radio today that I like. But if I had a choice of favorite songs it would be those songs from when I was a teenager.
Why is that? Because there is more to a favorite song than just the melody and a beat. A favorite song is defined by it's emotional signature. It's a song that pinpoints a feeling or a time in our life. Many of those where when I was a teenager - late 60's early 70's. Or when I was a young adult and music was a daily part of my life, in my car, on my stereo (8 track to be exact). As I dated. When I met my wife to be. When I was in college living a simple married life. The music I listened to defines those times, those feeling. It seems as we grow older music is less a part of the times we experience. The music is replaced by the sound of children, and work and white noise. Not that we become less romantic or less drawn to the flame of music. It just becomes less important.
We simply drive around in welcome silence. If we do turn the radio on we listen to the news, talk radio, or the pre-programmed stations our kids have chosen. Then it happens. We stumble across a station and it's playing. We turn it up. Then we turn it up louder! We start singing the lyrics because we've sung them a thousand times. We start to move our heads, tap our hands on the steering wheel. We want to dance in the car. We are charged with emotion. We are once again taken to that place, in that moment, a long time ago. It is a magical emotional arousal. A physical and chemical awakening.
If someone is in the car with us and we say, "OH MAN, I love this song!" We turn it up. "This is one of my favorites!" Most likely they won't feel the same. Because they are just hearing a melody and a beat. They are not feeling the song the way we are. It's not taking them anywhere. My favorites are varied. Soft rock, hard rock, ballads, I don't discriminate. They have a common golden thread in the way they have intertwined with the fabric of my life's quilt. They have been with me through thick and thin. They will be my favorites until the day I die. Whether you like them is not important. They are my favorites!
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