Music is such an important part of my life, it just amazes me that other people don’t feel the same! My husband, for example, would rather listen to Howard Stern or Fox News in the car or in our house. He was annoyed tonight when I turned on the kitchen under-the-counter radio while I was doing dishes, which prompted me to think about how important music is to me. I would much rather spend a Sunday afternoon cleaning the house or reading with the XM Radio on than have TV on in the background. When people talk about being stranded on an island with only x number of things, the top of my list would be music. Hopefully no one else would be on the island, because not only would they probably not approve of my eclectic tastes, but my singing should be reserved for the shower only!
For Christmas two years ago, my sister-in-laws bought me a recordable XM player. Basically, I can record live XM songs, programming, etc. and play it back like an IPOD. I can’t download other songs onto it, only XM material. It is the best gift I’ve ever received–the player erased all the songs I’d cataloged last summer and I had an emotional breakdown, soppy mess on the floor and all! My favorite musical guilty pleasure is listening to replays of old Casey Kasem American Top 40 episodes on XM Radio on the 70’s and 80’s channels. They play them on Saturdays and Sundays exactly as they were originally aired, except without commercials, which is the bomb! It’s hilarious to listen to them, especially when they say things like, “This is a new song by a newcomer to AT Top 40, Prince” or “These folks performed last week on Fridays” (does anyone remember what Fridays was? Scary enough, I do!).
As a teacher, I know that people learn by different modalities and people are more successful when learning in their preferred methods. I must be massively musical! I know that I teach many songs in my own elementary classroom to help students remember basic concepts, probably because I remember some of the songs I learned from my kindergarten teacher and Sesame Street.
I guess music just speaks to me, there are lines in print that elude me, but often times, when I hear them set to music, they just make sense and seem so prophetic. Music can help me change how I feel from one minute to the next, it has helped me through happy and sad times, and certain songs are forever attached to different events in my life, almost an instant memory. I can’t imagine my life without music in it, for all those reasons and more; I can’t imagine having that kind of void in my life like I perceive others who don’t love music must have.
It would be interesting to start a list of important songs that take me back to certain memories, good and bad, kind of like the Kenny Chesney song “I Go Back”….hmmm, might have to work on that!
