Day # 150 - Soundtrack

We’ve all referred to the music of our youth as the soundtrack of our lives. We all have songs that transport us back in time to a happier –or sadder – period in our lives. Sometimes the song reminds you of a person, a place, a moment; other times, the feeling is more general, an unnamed nostalgia that tugs at your heart while not entering your mind, hovering around the edges of your conscious mind, leaving clues while maintaining its vagueness.

For years, I’ve thought about the music that defines me. Now that I don’t listen to much music at all, it seems to take on a new meaning. It’s special in a different way. Like a person on a diet, who isn’t allowed to indulge in what he’s always enjoyed, when I find myself alone, surrounded by those familiar sounds, I feel I’ve been given permission to forget today and go back to a time that is simpler, if only in my mind.

Simpler is a relative term. Things were always complicated, and for me, age and what passes for wisdom are bringing simplicity, even as a mortgage, tuition, career and so many other big and little things should be complicating my life. Things are simple now as they were then. The difference is that now, I don’t want to make them complicated. Simplicity is the goal.

As I drive down the road listening to The Who, Cheap Trick, and The Rolling Stones, I can let go of the moment and enjoy an unknown feeling that isn’t happiness or sadness or nostalgia. It’s just an acknowledgement that what I was then made me who I am now. When I hear the soundtrack of my youth and wonder, “where are they now?” I am not wondering about the musicians, I’m wondering about the people who were there when these songs were still cool and relevant and not the novelty they are now. I wonder about the world as it was when these songs were forming my opinions rather than reminding me of what they were decades ago. I wonder if any of those people who were there at the time are in their car listening to the songs I am listening to and wondering what I’m wondering.

Then I realize these people in my memory are nameless, faceless; they are ghosts of my past. I may have been able to see them then but I can’t see them now. I wonder. The bittersweet feeling fades as the song ends and then another one comes on. One I haven’t heard in a while and the feeling dies down for just a moment and then is reignited and I’m driving down memory lane again. The memories are a little different but the feeling is the same: longing. Longing one feels when wishing one can recapture youth and spend it more wisely. It’s a senseless, pointless longing for the impossible, like searching for the end of a rainbow.

Then the next song comes on and it snaps me out of the dream. The tickling feeling in my eyes evaporates and I am back in 2010, driving to an appointment, earning my living. Wondering if I missed anything during my time travels. I am faced with the realization that living in the past can only be done at the expense of the moment, and maybe even the future.

- Adolfo