music and memory tagged posts

The Bittersweet Nostalgia of Aging Artists and the Songs They Sung Into You

Alright, enough, for the moment, of electoral tempests and distempers. The election and the world will be what they will be, chagrined, stupefied or elated as we ourselves may become in observing and then contending with them, as we must. But we need not do so in every waking moment. (Being at the mercy of our night dreams, of course, is another matter.)

Whatever happens come Tuesday and its aftermath, we must also make time for music and dancing and loving, for joshing and jiving, for romping through woods and along shores, for piling into cars and buses, subways, trains and planes en route to both our appointed and freefloating rounds.

For beholding “the lilies of the field, how they grow.”

The curse and blessing of the formative music from one’s youth (starting at about age 14, according to cognitive scientists) is that it demands squatter rights on the residence it took up in your heart and soul back t...

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