Without music, life would be a mistake. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Music, Memories and Happiness

Music is incredibly important to me, there is not a day that goes by that I don’t have music around me. I play it when I drive, I play it when I work, when I write, when I exercise and when I’m hiking/camping I usually play it before I sleep. While weight is absolutely critical when hiking the Appalachian Trail, not carrying music was never an option.

Tonight, a small little post that hit me the other day while I was driving and Steppin Out came on the radio and with that song I’m always immediately swept back to an exact time and place, my first dorm room at RIT in the fall of 1982. When that song comes on I can see, feel and smell that room, the cinder block walls, the cold floor that absolute feeling of foreignness, possibility and absolute fear. God I miss that feeling.

The image at the top is from Pink Floyd’s, The Wall. The whole damn album is loaded with memories for me and the one I’ll relate tonight is the first time I ever heard the album, which was when I first saw the movie. This was back when I was first loaded, and a couple of my fraternity brothers got me thoroughly and completely baked and took me to the movie on campus. The album/movie starts with some really soft and sweet music and I settled in, the drugs giving me some intense focus and then intense and extremely loud bass notes drop in and I leapt about six inches out of my bloody seat and that began a love affair with that album that continues 44 years later.

There was a summer in my life that I refer to as the summer of the Cathies. I was dating three at the same time, (yes they all knew about each other), and I would often come home from work to see a note on the counter, Cathy called. One of them I met at a polka hop, yes, a polka hop. I was loaded, at night, wearing sunglasses and watching fireworks and I saw her walking by. A friend said she was the most beautiful woman at his college, don’t even try, so of course I did. She gave me her number, she would later admit that she did it because she thought I was too loaded to every remember it, I did. We would date each summer of the next two summers while at home from college. She was tall, brilliant and gorgeous and a lot of fun and for some reason, Don Henley’s – Boys of Summer always makes me think of her and wonder where she is today.

I have an absolutely amazing friend, Kara, she was there for me at one of the absolute lowest points of my life. About that time Jack Johnson’s first album came out and there’s a song on it called Bubble Toes and it always brings me right to her and at a time when my world was absolutely upside down and she helped get me through.

My mother had an old stereo console and loved her vinyl albums, Johnny Mathis, Carol King and when she was doing spring cleaning, all the windows open, smell of bleach and massive volume with Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge over Troubled Water. The very first chords and I’m right back on State Street, smelling bleach, 1970’s puke green carpet and all.

Now that I’m wrapping this up I’m realizing there’s a lot of focus on my drunk years and I guess that makes sense given those several years were some of the most intense of my life. And the final song I want to mention ties back to one of my only good Christmas memories tied to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. My first real girlfriend was a woman named Kari and our very first kiss, after some copious quantities of peppermint schnapps, was while watching that movie in my friend Andrea’s room. And there was a song that Kari loved, mostly because of the singing kids at the end of the song, It’s Raining Again by Supertramp will forever take me back to her, to RIT and to that peppermint kiss.

So listen to some music, enjoy a lovely memory and have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane