I was born into a musical household so there was always some kind of music playing from classical to musicals to rock to country to popular. Later I added other genres to the repertoire of songs I listened to.

There are many songs that create an intangible feeling inside. I listen to Debussy’s Claire de Lune or Eric Satie’s Gymnopedie No. 1 and I’m transported to a rainy afternoon years ago to a home I both lived and didn’t live in, older, wiser, nostalgic; it feels a fictional persona.

I hear Habanera from Carmen and I’m a little kid again, sitting in a music rehearsal room watching the college kids that my dad was teaching; they seemed so old, exotic, singing in a foreign language and wearing costumes.

Everything You Want by Vertical Horizon embodies every time I watched as the one I loved chose someone else. Boulder to Birmingham by Emmylou Harris takes me to an alone place. Just Breathe by Pearl Jam is my deja vu song; it came, it saw, it conquered as if it had always been part of my muscle, blood, heart.

But the song? Probably Moon River. It’s deceptively simplistic. It’s taken me from childhood to adulthood, the words ingrained, the tune like a lullaby. It makes me think of the mountains and hiking, the ocean and stargazing, of yearning, being, loving, giving, receiving, trusting, of chasing dreams, of being loyal and true, of all of the sweet components of actually being a human being. It reminds me that for all of the longing to find complexity or being complex, that often we fail to see that sometimes the greatest beauty rests within the simplest of things.

We’re after the same rainbow’s end–
waiting ’round the bend

11/2/2016

S. Darlington