I have wanted to post and I have started drafts and nothing has come off of my keyboard quite right. It is a pitched time. I have never felt so much like things are going along but still falling apart at every turn quite like I have this year. So of course the writing does not want to come together. Most recently, I have wanted to indict the idiots of congress who say things along the vein of "now the sequester is hurting normal Americans" when all the sequester has done is hurt normal Americans. News like that causes bursts of insane laughter to come out of my shower in the mornings, because I cry enough over normal things that laughter is all that is left.
But I haven't been able to put it together quite right, and the moment has passed.
So today I am posting for the sake of the music. Because for the first time today I came across this one. Oh, Mumford & Sons. Masters of the slow crescendo of intensity, and the crushing wave that is the full impact of the song's resolution. I have no words.
Long ago, in the days of audio cassettes, I fell in love with rock and roll. I actually experienced the first blushes of that love even earlier - the first two albums I acquired were on vinyl. (The first one, Heart's self-titled album, my parents picked up for me after a night of babysitting, which was a responsibility, not a job that earned me extra cash. I found out later that they had double checked with my uncles that the music wasn't too inappropriate for their child. The second one, Invisible Touch by Genesis, I purchased my self with money I earned babysitting other people's children. I still have a fondness for the Heart album.) After that it was cassettes - including the quintessential 80's experience of trying to tape music off the radio without too much deejay talkover.
I collected the music because I loved it. When I was 21, my mom asked me to count my CDs. When I told her how many I had, she just looked at me and said, "That's a car." It would have been a used car, but what good would the car have been without anything to play in it?
I still do collect music, even in this age of free unlimited plays on YouTube. I am waiting A-N-X-I-O-U-S-L-Y for The National's new album to drop in May. Within the last week I have purchased 4 or 5 albums and a few random songs. That is higher than a normal week for me, but not unheard of. There are a lot of people in the world with music collections larger than mine, but I am still happy with the lifetime of music listening that my collection represents.
One of the bonus reasons I always wanted to collect music was so I could expose my kids to it. I figured that nothing could be more important to any child of mine than knowing the ins and outs of late 80's new wave and electronica, or understanding who was who in indie in the 90s. Besides, I still like it when my dad pops on the Beatles and tells me about the memories he associates with the different songs. As for me, the kid thing didn't really work out, but one of these days the nephew and the niece are going to get an earful! (The niece already likes to dance with her daddy to The Cure. He is doing right by her.)
So. What is the collective memory of our age that we want to pass on? If you would like to, dear reader, drop a comment. Tell about what you always wanted to share with a future child of yours and why. Tell how it turned out if it did, or how it might kind of turn out if it still just might. What is the thumbprint you want to send forward? What memory do you want the future to have of your experiences?
Here is one for me. This is a song that I would want perpetuated. It reminds me of the liberty of days off from my summer job in college - exploring the swath of the country covered by the southern parts of Nevada and Utah and the northern reaches of Arizona. Riding in cars with friends looking for adventure. And sometimes finding it. New Order - Regret
