My relationship with music has changed a lot over the years, and I've been fortunate enough both to be fairly musical and to remember different moments in my life when music has changed for me. That is, I can remember how my ability to hear and appreciate music has grown with time because I remember moments of revelation and can compare them to the before and after.
Starting the year I was born, my family's vacation every year took us to Brewster, Massachusetts, a little town on Cape Cod (it's a little hard to see on the map, but Cape Cod is essentially an enormous sandspit held in place by piles of glacial moraine). We rented the same one of two available cottages every year, except for one year when we had to rent the other cottage, which was somewhat disorienting. Anyway, when I was, I dunno, 7 or 8, maybe, I was listening to the radio, and Eric Carmen's song "Make Me Lose Control" was on. There's a pause in the song before the last chorus, and for a long time that pause seemed interminable--as a kid I thought the song had suddenly ended (now, I realize it's probably about a full second or less). And then two voices come in, and that's the first time I remember listening to two voices in harmony and trying to sing along to the less obvious one. Similar thing with REM's "It's The End of The World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)", from 1987's Document: at the break there are one and two and three and four voices that layer themselves in.
Heh.
Training four days in a row seems to have had adverse effects on my knees, because they hurt, a lot, and in new places kind of inside the joint. The left one is worse, and is even swollen. Ice and heat help a lot, but I can feel that sometimes they don't want to support my weight, which is bad. I'm going to an energy healing clinic on Friday, so maybe the teacher can do something; meanwhile I'm thinking that a stabilizing brace would be a fine investment until my health insurance starts and I can maybe get it looked at. Meantime my plan is to walk and stand as little as possible, and if I need to I have a stick I can cut down to a cane.
Something's definitely out of whack today in my head, possibly related to last night's party and some attendant stress therein. It's also that physical injury has a very powerful impact on me: I guess I don't like the feeling of getting older, and I really don't like the possibility that something is permanently wrong with me. It evokes the same despair of the future that I get from any other thought that something will never change. But never is a longer time than we get to see, and everything changes and nothing is as bad as it feels. I'll go to bed and see how I feel in the morning.
I work tomorrow, of all the crazy things. Who'da thunk?
