Ooooh, the bliss and thrill of finding new music, back in the day when almost everything was a "first"!
Discovering songs and music for the first time as a teenager, when so many (old) songs were completely new and exciting to me, I couldn't believe how others had known them for years and could remain all cool about something that appeared so totally life-changing to me... music that had me reassess and reconsider everything I thought I knew up to that point, music that completely rocked my world...
I must have been about 15 or 16 when I came across Laura Nyro's "Gibsom Street"... I couldn't believe it... it was the first song ever that had me completely thunderstruck. Until then I have had my favorite bands like any other teenager, sometimes because I could identify with what they stood for, sometimes simply because the singer was good looking or whatever else will make you buy an album as a teenager. I had been a fan of Depeche Mode, U2, The Smiths... I was rather enthusiastic about their music - but this was different... this was completely new to me. I had no clue what that song (Gibsom Street) really was about but it's intensity and power touched me in a way I hadn't known before. It opened up a new world to me. Later the songs of artists like Patti Smith, Tim Buckley, Joni Mitchell or Sam Cooke would give me similar "aha moments" at my first discovery of their music. Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, Nick Drake... Howe Gelb, Jeff Finlin, Vic Chesnutt, Tom Waits, T. Bone Burnett ... aah, so many others along the way, really.
I have experienced a tiny spark of it the other day - a spark just big enough to make me realize how often it doesn't turn into a flame these days.
Is it just me or is it in the nature of things that we do not perceive things and situations as intensively anymore as we grow older... do we "desensitize" over the years? How come we seem to lose that gift of pure, unconditional excitement to a certain degree once we've grown up? It happens less and less that I stumble across some music that really sweeps me off my feet the way it regularly happened in the past. I wonder why that is. Is it because we have already seen everything, heard everything in one way or another? I miss it sometimes. Don't you?
As a teenager, nothing touched me as deeply as music - a song would turn into colors and pictures, into something almost 3D, something tangible, something real. Not so much by what it said in it's lyrics, taking a song literally, but by the atmosphere it created, the images it conjured up. I would find a new artist and the discovery could draw me out of the world for days on end, into some kind of parallel universe where music was all that was real, putting me in a state of bliss and positive excitement, totally immersed in the diverse impressions and perceptions that came with each find.
I remember quite a few of those "epiphany" moments, induced by a song or some music I had never heard before - music that gave me intense sensation, that really clicked with me, that set something in motion... music that inspired me like nothing ever had, at times stimulating my senses to a degree that it almost hurt, but I loved it. A friend suggested the term "audible orgasm" to describe this particular sensation but there's much more to it. It's like falling in love for the first time - absolutely mind-blowing! A feeling so overwhelming, so confusing, yet so exciting... an unconditional willingness to become absorbed. Suddenly nothing's the same.
Music has always been a crucial element in my life. It seems that every song, every new kind of music, every artist I discovered for myself, always found me at a moment when his or her special gift was exactly what I needed, what I might have been looking for without even knowing. Often it came as a missing link, a trigger, a challenge, an insight, an answer. In music I found solace, inspiration, comfort, encouragement... a counterbalance to all the things that might have shaken me at times. There were moments that would have felt impossible to bear without the companionship of certain songs, certain voices... days when everything seemed too much, times of doubt and pain that some unaware songwriter helped me through.
Over the years I have found other sources to draw on. I turn to nature and it's healing energy when I feel at odds with the world. I find inner peace and balance in meditation and yoga, in walking even. Silence is an enormous source of strength for me these days as well (amazingly enough, silence has it's own sweet music)
But there is, and always will be... MUSIC! It's not like it doesn't happen any more. Maybe it's less intense a lot of times... maybe it's true that we've heard too much to find that same old, innocent and unconditional enthusiasm that we experienced when everything was a first for us... but yes, music was my first love. It will always rock my world.
