The Soundtrack of our Lives
Music. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote that it’s “the universal language of mankind.” Tolstoy called it the “shorthand of emotion.”
When is your earliest memory of music?
I’m riding in our family station wagon tapping my foot to pop tunes on the AM radio station. And my mom is playing Boots Randolph on the record player console when I get home from school. She would soon give me a record she didn’t like from the Columbia House Music Club. A mail order bonanza Which began in the ’50s as a way for Columbia Records to market and sell their artists outside of stores. They began by selling vinyl records, and later adapted to offer other formats as they became popular — cassette tapes, CDs, even 8-tracks (look it up).
For as long as I can recall, music has been a necessary part of my life’s story. I wake up to it, go to sleep with it. I’ve danced in the basement of a fraternity house, made love on the beach and sipped a nice wine from Napa Valley. From a transistor radio and now digital, the soundtrack of my journey is ripe with musical memories.
For most of us it’s impossible to hear music without feeling, without remembering where we were when we first heard those lyrics, the drum beat — the emotions coming rushing back like a tidal wave.
Billy Joel once said that he believes “musicians have a duty, a responsibility to reach out, to share your love or pain with others.” And without doubt, his music accomplishes that goal better than most.
In every heart there is a room
A sanctuary safe and strong
To heal the wounds from lovers past
Until a new one comes along
And So it Goes, Billy Joel, 1990
For me, playing music took those feelings and emotions to a whole other cosmic sensation. The feelings you achieve when actually performing with other musicians has been called an aphrodisiac that arouses and induces desires and pleasures beyond what merely listening can achieve. And while I haven’t played music in public for over a decade, going to live music venues continues to broaden and shape my feelings and overall quality of life.
So turn up the tunes, go to your favorite local pub, break the bank and see a live rock and roll show. Your soul will thank you.
