A Song in Your Heart

As a kid, I was told what it meant to be a man. Right. Led Zeppelin wasn’t the first band to push teen lust. Music, as a rule, evokes sensual emotions like joyful noise, but I wouldn’t say lusty melodies promote sexual promiscuity. The blues will do it for you too. We weren’t really listening to the lyrics in those days. There’s no shortage of words taken from old songs that accumulate in our lives. It’s my life, and I’ll do what I want. Schools out, forever. I could go on forever, expounding on lyrics without missing a beat. My body stunk, but I kept my funk. Going commando, involved again. Taking quick marine spritz baths.

Days of double-trouble and miscellaneous mischief. Take a walk on the wild side. Those were the days, my friend. Thanks to the gods, they did end eventually. Although we thought they never would. Youth moves faster than a little red Corvette. We’re old a helluva lot longer than when we were, ahem, forever young. Or kind of younger, still losing diminishing returns as brighter moments black out. Shattered dreams were interrupted. Tomorrow will come for certain, bringing the promises of peaceful happiness and prosperity. Also, problems, disappointments, despair, and much more difficulty are needed to break on through to the other side. Come on, baby, light my fire. I’m stone free to do what I want.

All the young dudes carry the news. You know the rest. Life is a box set of lyrics to gauge living life. A songbook in a musical lifestyle of beats and rhythms. Frequencies unheard of to the naked ear, with notes composed by a blind eye. White noise is the spectral static sound on an ancient planet’s plastic transistor radio. A life without music is a world without sound. I can’t imagine it without the standard soundtrack, but if you live long enough, you may desire silence. There’s lots of peace and quiet, more often than not. Nowadays, silence is preferable to the noise that passes for music. I’d rather listen to birds singing and rain tapping the windows. The wind whistling through trees. Even the noise of crickets is preferable to a band of old white guys trying to rock out. Sorry, Mick and Keith. The Rolling Stones fit that bill perfectly. I’ve never heard of Taylor Swift. Am I missing anything?

There was a time when a song could save your life, or at least your soul. It happened on a regular basis, every time you heard that song played over and over again. It’s not the same; years pile up like stacks of old records. They have an odor, like old, wet, moldy newspapers. Those golden oldies everyone has somewhere. Tucked away in the closet of 33 1/3 and 45 rpm vinyl recordings are memories. Those stale old ditties are on the permanent list of songs I want to forget about forever, but they’re on constant repeat, replay delay tape loops etched into my human spirit. Ringo, Paul, and Dolly redo “Let It Be.” They really should. Here’s Chuck Berry singing “Roll Over Beethoven.” Leon Russell did a cover version too, along with The Beatles and Jerry Lee Lewis.

I have a friend who posts lines from song lyrics on social media. They’re so cryptic that sometimes you need a decoder enigma box to decipher the meanings of the random lines. Some are easily recognizable, but most of the time their message invokes mystery meanings. Imagine if we communicated with lines from popular songs. You'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. Let’s all get up and dance to a song that was a hit before your mother was born. Don’t do me like that; I love everyday people. No, I won't back down. Whip it good, and she’s a brick house. A bunch of gibberish.

Name the tune and win a prize! The theme song will always make you smile. The introduction to the show is always so lively. It’s a catchy little number. A real toe-tapper. The president’s speech was entirely made up of old songs. The crowd responded, chanting show tunes, commercial jingles, political slogans and Broadway melodies. Maybe whistling past the graveyard or humming in a crowded theater.

Join in with the band or go it alone. There’s a cappella. Barbershop, classical, contemporary, gospel, doo-wop, jazz—they all sing to the choir. Their songs are similar but different in tone and harmony. The timbres of the timings are metronomic pantomimes to the sound of one voice singing and one hand clapping. Perhaps you dig opera, or maybe it’s not your thing. Some weird Gregorian chant or something like a Mongolian throat singing folk song. Even though you sound like Yoko Ono on a good day or Slim Whitman on the worst day, only the song remains, sing it.