The closest thing to magic

Earlier this week I was sitting in a local car dealer’s waiting room while getting my oil changed. A song began to play in the background.

Immediately I began to feel a deep melancholy within my soul. Sadness. Sorrow. Spiraling downward.

All this apparently just because I heard the first few notes of the Neil Young song ‘Old Man’.

But here is the good news; that exact same song has equally often been known to make my soul soar with pure elation. Peace. Joy. Spiraling upward.

I have no doubt that each reader has experienced similarly strong emotions regarding certain songs from one’s past.

When listening to Frank Sinatra sing ‘My Way’, I tend to run the full gamut of all emotions of which I am humanly capable - seemingly all at once. By the song’s end I feel “joyfully triumphant”, for my having chosen to live my own life largely on my own terms.

I could listen to the first verse of ‘Amazing Grace’ ten thousand times (and likely have, in my head). I have eventually come to where I don’t make any “religious” connections at all when I hear it. Neither heaven nor hell enters my mind. I simply come away a bit more strengthened to relay the experience of “giving unmerited grace” to every soul who ever comes my way.

Let me hear Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ and my soul soars toward the outer reaches of the known Universe - and beyond. I seem to be “separated” from my body. I can only take so much of that feeling at certain times, however. Such other other-worldly melodies can sometimes lead me (in my darkest hours) toward a longing to “leave this existence”. I must stop the music and return. Yet I return better. Finding beauty where I did not find it before. Less fearful of anything, I become. And a bit more joyous about everything.