This morning, doing my sun salutations on the deck in front of my fathers empty chair, I decided to honor his memory by listening to his favorite album, Bridge Over Troubled Water, instead of my usual playlists. It came out when I was four, and Dad played it on an endless loop for years--until right before he died, in fact, when he asked my son to play Sounds of Silence at his funeral. And as I listened to those songs in their familiar order--so familiar they are as much a part of me as my fingerprints--they brought me so much joy it felt like having an out-of-body experience. It made me think about the scattered way in which my childrens generation listens to music these days, one song from here, one from there. All that DJing from the back seat because its easy, and they can. There is, however, an undeniable power in an album played start to finish. Meanwhile, that same son, who at 13 played guitar at his grandfathers funeral, recently told me hed been listening to Miles Davis Kind of Blue on an endless loop while studying for finals at the end of his freshman year of college. It made me happy to think that masterpieces of music, like the memory of those we truly love, will live on.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 12:22:33 +0000