Road music
Originally published at Examorata. Please leave any comments there.
One of my favorite places to listen to music is in the car. I used to seek out long drives, less-known back roads to get to familiar places, just to have more time to sing along with my favorite music. With gas prices being what they are I don’t do as much of that as I used to, but when I have a good excuse to go on a longer drive, the music is what I enjoy the most.
This weekend I had a fine excuse - my mother’s birthday was Friday in addition to Sunday being Mother’s Day, and after a brunch on Saturday (to avoid the crowds!) I found myself driving to my brother’s house a good forty miles away to continue the celebration. It was sunny, gorgeous, 75 degrees - a beautiful day for a drive, and to turn the music up good and loud.
I picked one album (I am still a listener to entire albums, not a cherry-picker and -downloader of singles) and was enjoying singing along when it struck me that what I really wanted to listen to was a different album. Thanks to modern technology, I was able to navigate over to the other album via the car stereo with minimal fuss.
It was hard to say why I was struck so suddenly with a desire to change albums mid-drive, but when the second song came on I understood. The album was Josh Ritter’s To the Yet Unknowing World and the song was “Tokyo!” I could barely tell you what the rest of the song is about, but at the heart of it are these lines:
Don’t let the things you hold onto / Ever outnumber the things you let go.
Don’t let the things you remember / Ever outnumber the things you live for.
Maybe that’s just what I needed to hear when my mind was at ease and happy, doing something it loves. Sure, it’s a good motivational song for literal closet-cleaning (“I don’t need to hold onto these jeans any more, by golly!”), but it works even better for metaphorical closet-cleaning. There are a lot of things I could stand to let go - fears, resentments, old ideas and patterns of thought. On a sunny day, driving on an open road for a happy occasion with just that song playing, it seemed not only possible to make those changes but easy.
It’s not, of course. Changing your mind is a really difficult thing to do. But those blue-sky days can make anything seem possible, and maybe that’s the real reason I like singing-and-driving as much as I do. It puts me in a good enough mood to be open to all kinds of possibilities.