(September Song Project, #6)
Thinking about this music challenge has really brought home to me just how much of my life is anchored in song. I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me but it did, somehow.
Thinking about this music challenge has really brought home to me just how much of my life is anchored in song. I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me but it did, somehow.
There’s something very sticky about music, isn't there? Jingles from our childhood, our tendency toward earworms…, not to mention the way that certain tunes are nothing but extra-strength fly paper for memories, both good and bad. Music is kind of a framework for compressing and storing our important moments, filing them away neatly for years, needing only the trigger of melody to unpack a whole gamut of emotions.
Sometimes music picks away slowly, niggling and poking until it gradually uncovers a recalcitrant memory. Other times, it only takes a single opening note to call up an experience so vivid that you find yourself laughing (or crying) before you’ve even had a chance to register what you're remembering.
In fact, in the hands of the very talented, music can even knock you to your backside from feelings that were never actually yours to begin with…
(Brace yourself for 1:24!)
Music.
I’m glad we’ve got it.
Aaaand... that's it for the September Song Project.
Thanks to Mrs. Fever for launching the idea - I hope you've had fun coming along for the ride.
:-)
Aaaand... that's it for the September Song Project.
Thanks to Mrs. Fever for launching the idea - I hope you've had fun coming along for the ride.
:-)
5 comments:
Truth - I finally (after wanting to, for YEARS) saw Cats a few years ago - was mildly unimpressed - it wasn't that it was a bad stage performance - and the costuming was wonderful - but it just sort of fell "flat". Albeit some of the songs were terrific.
Extra strength fly paper... That's I'm... QUITE a visual...
I've never seen Cats live but I like a lot of Andrew Lloyd Weber's music, and have always been drawn to this song. (The soundtrack to Phantom of the Opera placed highly on my listening list as a teen, too.)
Thank you for playing along with me this month, Jz. It's been fun! :)
Love Betty Buckley, love her version of that song, but haaaaaate the musical! I thought my ears were going to bleed when I saw it, and I will NOT be seeing the movie!
But "sticky" is a wonderful way to describe music. I can remember every word to every song from the 6th grade Christmas play. Why? Never heard it again after we did it. There were no recordings of it, videos didn't even exist, but I still remember it.
Music is like a bookend for memories, certain songs frame times and places.
s-
I hear ya. It sort of missed the boat for me, too. I didn’t hate it but I didn’t swoon, either.
However, I’ll bet if I’d seen it with Betty Buckley singing, I would have had a different view. It’s a great song but I have never heard anyone measure up to her delivery.
Mrs. F-
I like his music, too - just that the actual shows don’t always pack the punch for me that you might expect them to.
It was a fun month, thank you! :-)
D-
It’s a good thing they didn’t rely on any of us for their Broadway success, isn’t it?
I know exactly what you mean about remembering lyrics. Even tho’ I pretty much never go to church anymore, when I do, I rarely have to crack open the hymnal.
mm-
True dat!
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