It got me thinking...: Mix Tape 1

Each of the songs mentioned are linked for download at Amazon in the text and video linked at the end of the article. This is the first in a series.

Music tapped me on the shoulder, took me by the hand, and led me out into the world. I was shy. I trusted no one. I lived inside my adolescent brain, in my own very vivid imagination. In “The Sound of Silence” (P. Simon, 1964), I learned I was not alone:

“Ten thousand people, maybe more, people talking without speaking, people hearing without listening…”

I heard people ‘talking’ as eloquent silences that cried out for love but were lost in the ten thousand other voices also crying out, all going unheard in the din. I found hope there. Those are the first lyrics I can remember touching me, personally. They opened the door, opened my eyes, and for the first time I could recognize fear and loneliness in other people. I wasn’t alone, and in not being alone I was free to go out and be among them. I could be open to enjoy “Saturday in the Park ”(R. Lamm).

“People dancing, really smiling, a man playing guitar…”

That is how it was, the perfect anthem to my teen years. We were a generation of children who sang. Everywhere we gathered, we sang. Someone had a guitar and we all sang along. If there was no guitarist, we sang acappella, half a dozen or more voices joined in an instinctive harmony. Music was alive, it was everywhere, and people dance-walked their way through the ‘70s. Children went. We burst out the doors of morning and tumbled back home again through the doors of nightfall, and in between we danced a nomadic migration toward our future selves.

“But you've been told many times before
Messiahs pointed to the door
And no one had the guts to leave the temple!

I'm Free -I'm free
And freedom tastes of reality” (R. Daltry)

My siblings and I were allowed to wander. We were expected to make reasonable choices, and we were expected to make mistakes. This, my parents said, is how you learn. We gave you, my parents said, the foundation you need, now you must learn to apply it. I feel sorry for children today. They are caged in a way I never was. People claim the world was safer then. I had guns held to my head three times before I was 18 years old, and not once because I was somewhere I should not have been! ‘Safe’ is an illusion. ‘Safe’ is a euphemism for a cage called fear. Music set me free from that cage and no danger was going to force me back into it. Danger passes. Fear takes root and strangles you like kudzu on a tree. It doesn’t look like a killer…

Freedom. Exploration. Adventure. Wanderlust. We all did it, my siblings and I, we all wandered off to explore the world. My exploration came when I was 18, the summer after graduation. We hit the road, my boyfriend and I, hitchhiking around the country with no particular destination or timeline. Where the ride went, we went.

“You're sick of hangin' around and you'd like to travel;
Get tired of travelin' and you want to settle down.
I guess they can't revoke your soul for tryin',
Get out of the door and light out and look all around. “

(R. Hunter)

We didn’t have any money, so we ate when someone fed us. We slept wherever we found a sheltered spot if the night threatened rain, or in any little clearing we came across. Sometimes people offered their yards or porches for us to pitch camp on. One family kept us for the weekend. They had 11 children in a two-bedroom house. We slept on the lawn, ate blue cornbread, and played. There was some serious love for mankind in that family. I can still feel it thirty years later.

A different night, in a different town, we slept under a bridge. With the interstate running over our heads, we went to sleep alone and woke up to a community of homeless people there because they had nowhere else to be. These people, who had nothing and no real hope of ever having anything, fed us, reveled in our tale of wanderlust, sang with us, and sent us out to conquer the world with their love and well wishes to carry us. A ‘long strange trip,’ indeed.

I miss the singing. I think progress did us in. We have so much music available on the Internet now. We load it into our personal pocket jukeboxes, plug it into our ears, and shut out the world. Those lyrics from ‘The Sounds of Silence’, the ones that set me free, have a different meaning for me now. We text and tweet all day long, in short, vague sentences. Our ears are plugged with music, but we no longer hear each other’s voices. Where are the impromptu sidewalk sing-alongs? Children aren’t even allowed out anymore, much less allowed to gather into little gangs of joyous singers. There is no acoustic guitarist sitting on a picnic table strumming songs. Even if there were, would enough random passers-by even know his songs, much less sing along?

A few months ago, someone asked if anyone actually knew the words to ‘Kumbayah ’. I do. Would you like to sing it with me?

“Someone’s singing, my Lord, Kumbayah.

Someone’s singing, my Lord, Kumbayah.

Oh, Lord, Kumbayah…”

The sounds of silence; Simon & Garfunkle, words & music: Paul Simon

http://www.lyricsdepot.com/simon-garfunkel/sounds-of-silence.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-S90Uch2as&feature=related

Saturday in the Park; Chicago , written by Robert Lamm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTFD1C4tVIg

http://www.lyricsdepot.com/chicago/saturday-in-the-park.html

I’m Free: The Who, Roger Daltry

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGa70tVYVKo