Songs

It's 1:36 here in the town that I live in, and I was about to go to bed, my right hand over the left mouse "click button" to start a program called "MuvAudio", which, by the way, is an excellent way to make LEGAL copies of music from subscription services like Rhapsody, Napster, etc.

(Y'all don't know this, but I have something close to 13,000 songs in my collection, and am a MAJOR Car Audio buff. Have spent way too much money -- yes, I know, my lovely wife -- trying to get that mobile audio heaven on wheels. Never found it, or screw it up too many times to sort of let it go...however, I keep re-doing my list, over, and over and over again (no. 146 at last count over the past 5 years...sigh).

Anywho, I am getting off topic.

As I was about to click and walk upstairs to bed, I began to slowly sit back down (due to a combination of memory lane tripping and being too damned fat to lift my ass off of my chair while tired). My spouse went to bed a couple of hours ago, and in once again looking for "the almighty bit-rate" of perfection for my mp3's, I listed to a few cuts that made me think of many of thing from my younger days...

...those days that I thought sucked creampie out of John Holme's big member.

I started with playing some Chicago (yeah, melanin-blessed folks can listed to lite rock, so shut up), listening to 3 songs in particular...

1. Hard to Say I'm Sorry
2. You're The Inspiration
3. Hard Habit to Break

I sat down and continued to do what I was doing, knowing that listening to this stuff would bring up some really bad memories. Memories of a 21 year old who was truly in love for the first time with someone who, in hindsight, I should of kept a friendly distance from. A small spot in time when life was pretty much perfect for an instant, then led me down a path that, to this day, I have yet to recover from. I teared up slightly, then continued to listen till the last strains of "Habit" faded away.

I then sighed slightly, and kept doing what I've done way too many times when it comes to my music collection...

...as well as when it comes to music and my life in general.

A song, whether it reminds you of a good time or bad, just allows you to escape a little bit..even if it is to a place that you'd rather never go back to. In the case of the Chicago tracks, it reminded me of a small space in the fabric of my existence when I felt...alive, important, and at some peace. I didn't worry about professional or personal failures, whether it would be in relationships, or the 9 jobs I've had since I left college. It let me escape into the quiet that my home was experiencing with my children asleep, so I can temporarily put aside my failures as a father.

Yeah, I said it.

I will never be Cliff Huxtable, to be sure (besides, I did the cardigan thing in the 80s...even tho I did LOOK good). Bout the closest I've seen to awesome parent-ness is an old friend and his kids back in NY...I mean, their teenaged kids WANTED to be around them.

My 7 year old things I am Shrek, Bin Ladin, Satan, and Scrappy-Doo wrapped up in one.

(Y'all folks know Scrappy f'd up "Scooby-Doo." Hands down).

The music did make me a little sad, but it also made me smile a little, cuz it brought me to other times that songs made a "biography", so to speak, of my life.

"From this moment on" by Shania Twain, which is the song that I danced with when my final girlfriend became my wife.

"Purple Rain", which I blasted whenever I was about to break.

"RockBox" By Run-DMC, which I still crank till this day, and is, to me, "hip-hop."

Sigh, music is a big part of my being...and it is among the few entities that respects me.

Makes me wonder if there are songs that YOU feel that strongly about, even as time grays you.

Gotta go...have to click on that mouse, drift off to a song, to only wake up to the white noise of reality.