(no subject)
I've been listening to Bruce Springsteen a lot recently.
I know he's not everyone's favorite, and as a general rule I don't have much of his music lurking throughout my playlist, but sometimes I just really get in the mood and before I know what's going on, I've got "Dancing in the Dark" up loud enough to actually shake the speakers and I'm singing along with all my heart.
That's generally when I realize that either my daughter or the pets are staring at me like I've shaved my head.
But in all seriousness, there's just some music that plays upon a person's capability for nostalgia, and Springsteen, particularly that song, coils around all the right nerves and tugs on all the right strings. He's got a live version of "Brown-Eyed Girl" that has the same effect, and I'm also partial to Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69."
It's this overwhelming sense that, had I not been born for this particular life, this particular path, I might have been the personification of one of these songs. I guess it's hard to explain. For me, "Dancing in the Dark" always stirs up a combination of images. Half's set in a big city, with a girl who lives in a two-room apartment and uses boxes she hasn't yet unpacked in place of chairs, who waitresses, maybe, a scraping-by kind of job where she stands on her breaks and watches the people, thinking about the intricacies of their lives, and wondering when hers is going to start fitting the songs on the radio. The other half's a man in some, rural area, who sleeps in jeans and smokes a cigarette first thing every morning, watching the light come in against the windowframe and marveling at how it always catches the reeds outside at just the right angle to give it an autumn-color, no matter what time of the year it is.
It's always fleeting pictures, pulled from my farthest corners of my imagination the way they are when I'm really involved in a book, and sometimes I wish they'd stay longer, because while I can think about it all night, and imagine the continuation of the girl and the man, it always feels like I'm dreaming up a story that's already been done, and done differently.
But there's always something to do, here in my world as opposed to theirs, and so the brief snapshots are better than nothing. I deal with the day-to-day, and the next time I fall into an unusual music-listening mood, I come back and pick up where I left off. Like a novel, like a film reel.
I know he's not everyone's favorite, and as a general rule I don't have much of his music lurking throughout my playlist, but sometimes I just really get in the mood and before I know what's going on, I've got "Dancing in the Dark" up loud enough to actually shake the speakers and I'm singing along with all my heart.
That's generally when I realize that either my daughter or the pets are staring at me like I've shaved my head.
But in all seriousness, there's just some music that plays upon a person's capability for nostalgia, and Springsteen, particularly that song, coils around all the right nerves and tugs on all the right strings. He's got a live version of "Brown-Eyed Girl" that has the same effect, and I'm also partial to Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69."
It's this overwhelming sense that, had I not been born for this particular life, this particular path, I might have been the personification of one of these songs. I guess it's hard to explain. For me, "Dancing in the Dark" always stirs up a combination of images. Half's set in a big city, with a girl who lives in a two-room apartment and uses boxes she hasn't yet unpacked in place of chairs, who waitresses, maybe, a scraping-by kind of job where she stands on her breaks and watches the people, thinking about the intricacies of their lives, and wondering when hers is going to start fitting the songs on the radio. The other half's a man in some, rural area, who sleeps in jeans and smokes a cigarette first thing every morning, watching the light come in against the windowframe and marveling at how it always catches the reeds outside at just the right angle to give it an autumn-color, no matter what time of the year it is.
It's always fleeting pictures, pulled from my farthest corners of my imagination the way they are when I'm really involved in a book, and sometimes I wish they'd stay longer, because while I can think about it all night, and imagine the continuation of the girl and the man, it always feels like I'm dreaming up a story that's already been done, and done differently.
But there's always something to do, here in my world as opposed to theirs, and so the brief snapshots are better than nothing. I deal with the day-to-day, and the next time I fall into an unusual music-listening mood, I come back and pick up where I left off. Like a novel, like a film reel.