It is hard to believe that a song can still reduce me to tears. Have you ever had that happen? I don’t mean just any song, but something has to hit you right. It can be something you hear for the first time and really listen to, whether a lyric or a melody, or even a chord progression or dynamic can do it. It can, of course, be a song you have heard many times before that you associate with a moment in time. I love those. I could write so many stories about these moments recreated by a spin of the song.Music has that immediate effect on me. I guess that is why I love it so much. Jim and I are travelling today, and he always brings these fancy Bose headphones so he can listen to his i-pod in style. He popped the headphones onto me, and a James Taylor song started playing. It took about 5 seconds for the tears to start. The song reminds me of my mom. James wrote it about his experience around his brother’s death. It is an amazing song just hearing the story alone, but this song always struck a chord in me, and is embedded in my subconscious, just waiting till I heard it again, to bloom again. It is honest, has a sense of humor, but also goes beyond words, as all good music does. “Its enough to be on your way…”. This particular tune is especially nurturing to me as it reminds me that we are perfect at this moment in time, no matter what is going on, that the movement is a movement forward. How great is that? Or as Ina Garten would say, how bad can that be? And then it relates back to that vulnerability that James Taylor so often shows in his lyrics and melodies, so you don’t feel alone.
I was brought back to the present moment, after several minutes of flowing tears, by a rather decent airline breakfast (American Airlines) of cheese blintzes and fresh fruit, and a piping hot cup of tea.
