Golden moments
Sometimes I buy CDs and never listen to them. I have to conclude from this fact that I'm spoiled.
So anyways, after being completely brain-drained from HTML/CSS coding today, I decided to play a little Medal of Honor. For those who've never played the game, it's a first-person shooter set in World War II. Lots of bullets. Lots of grenades. Lots of shouting in German and Cockney.
Well, back to the original point, see, I had set Windows Media Player to a-playin' The Best of James Taylor, one of the aforementioned CDs that I had bought and never listened to. (In all fairness to the "spoiled" conclusion, though, I did buy this one half-off at Cheapo's, the last real used-CD store in Austin.
So as I'm running around shooting a machine gun, deathmatch-style, against 8 or 9 other nerds doing the same thing, a little ditty called Golden Moments comes on. And it's perhaps the most non-combat-appropriate song I've ever heard.
And I had that rare, strange feeling that the song was perfectly familiar -- as if I knew the lyrics and music in each upcoming verse, before they were played. Yet I have no recollection of ever having heard this tune in my life.
Music gets burned into specific moments in my life. If I hear Seal's Waiting for You, I immediately think November 2003, and I'm entering onto Highway 360, heading south, from the 2222 intersection. I had the song up loud on my MP3 player -- and while I shouldn't have been driving with headphones, I was, and there was something really liberating about listening to that song and singing that day.
If I hear Weird Al's Good Old Days, I think of a stretch of road somewhere around Kerrville, Texas, at about 2:00 on a Tuesday afternoon in June of 1988. We were taking my brother to a weeklong summer camp, and I listened to that song again and again on my Walkman. There was something very tranquil and warm about the world I was in that day. I remember details from that short trip that really amaze me; it was over 15 years ago, but I still remember the color of the grass and the smell of the air, and that a vinyl banner was stretched across the main road in town -- and that I was listening to that album again and again in the back seat of my mom's Suburban.
Lady in Red will always be the last song of our first (and only) eighth grade dance. I worked up the nerve to ask Thayer Walker to dance with me. I can still remember the texture of the fabric of her dress on the tips of my fingertips.
This song recalled the same familiarity but with no solid memory to attach it to. It was like a moment in my life had been captured and marked by the music, but then the memory was lost and only the song and its vague ties to a forgotten story or feeling were all that remained.
I don't think my parents were big James Taylor fans, but I suppose it's possible that I heard this song long before my brain could even form a record of my life. Maybe all there was to it was a shapeless state of contentment and warmth.
Now if all my golden momentsIt is a nice song.
Could be rolled into one
They would shine just like the sun
For a summer day
And after it was over
We could have it back again
With credit to the editor
For striking out the rain (very clean)
And all it really needed
Was the proper point of view
No one's gonna bring me down
No one's gonna stop me now
Next-morning-update: Boy, staying up until 2 am really amplifies my natural tendency to ramble.
Posted by Matt at January 28, 2005 1:30 AM
