Friday, April 25, 2008

Heat, Sweat and Tears

As summer explodes this April with the sun sizzling down with a vengeance like it's trying to bore past my newly sunscreened skin, I'm not sure if it's the extremity of the weather that's been getting me a tad emotional lately.

Like when I was watching Little Women on TV earlier today. As with most everything that comes on TV, I stumbled onto it halfway through starting with where Jo goes home to find little Beth dying and as the two sisters grapple in their own ways with death, I started tearing up crazily. I'd first read Little Women at boarding school at St Agnes, Haflong, all of 11 years old, and I had loved the story of Jo March and her sisters, and later made it a point to catch hold of the sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys as well. As I write this, I suddenly remember a long-legged crush I had at college whom I'd obliquely refer to as Ted in my diaries after Jo's long-legged son Ted :)

And then the other night after watching Andrew Lloyd Webber night on American Idol and loading my phone anew with Michael Crawford's Music of the Night, and later flipping through my song list looking for another Lloyd Webber favourite Love Changes Everything by the divinely throated Michael Ball, I lay exhaustedly in bed traipsing down memory lane... Barbra Streisand, Jim Croce, Gordon Lightfoot....

I read somewhere once that music is the shortest route down yesteryears or something to that effect, and I couldn't agree more. The association of music and memories is so instant. When I listen to The Eagles' Witchy Woman, I don't just hear the song. I'm transported back to a picnic on a balmy day with a group of friends after we'd just recently come back from a college excursion around the country at the height of summer (early June, to be specific). To this day I can never listen to Witchy Woman without fond recollections of that fun day out.

Friends with who I'd shared the music suddenly become terribly missable, even those I haven't seen or even remembered for ages. The good times, the fun times.... they come crowding back into the mind. Funny but at the time I'd never thought I'd ever look back and miss those times so much one day. Just like a favourite quote from a John Lennon song, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." And Lennon couldn't have imagined himself as he was writing and recording that song that he'd be dead just a few weeks later. And when I was a young wide-eyed college kid, I never ever thought a poem we had in English class would ring so true someday -

Oft in the stilly night
ere slumber's chain has bound me,
fond memory brings the light
of other days around me....


20 comments:

  1. hehe, you watch American idol??? :-) ok, no comments. :-)

    I know what you mean about the songs flooding back memories. Happens to me to whenever I listen to Poison's "Talk dirty to me". I was too young to party back then, but I still remember zooming on bikes and gypsies with my sisters' friends... pre-prohibition days.

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  2. I'm sorry to deflect attention from your post, but isn't it absolutely appropriate that what triggers off nostalgia for Illusionaire has to be something entitled "talk dirty to me"? hehee!

    I do understand what you mean. I lost an old friend recently. Although we'd lost touch over the years, when I was informed of his death, the first thing that came into my mind was some old Bob Dylan songs we used to be crazy about. I just played those songs and sat in a blue funk for a long, long time. Nice post, good read.

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  3. Very appropriate, daydreambeliever. You probably don't know but my onetime nickname for Illusionaire here was Shags :D Goes nicely with his song too, doesn't it? :P

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  4. Isn't it irksome how some people always manage to bring in obscenities and vulgarisms, even at the most inappropriate places? Without even botherng how some of us, like me, are appalled by such crude language... seriously, some people need a few sessions of psychotherapy rather than physiotherapy...

    :-)

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  5. Hello, Callipoia!
    I loved this post and this blog.
    Have NICE DAY

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  6. been ages since iv watched american idol...god i miss it!

    nyways,lov this post!totaly feel you there.this is xactly wat a good song's supposd to do rite?make u feel like its ur own&make yu rmbr long 4gotten moments..

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  7. Thanks eszet, that's so true. My favourite parts of AI are the auditions. Amazing how many clowns they have in America :D

    Hello David, and thank you. Have a blessed Sunday.

    Illusionaire, if I were Philo I'd either flatten you or be highly flattered for sounding like a carbon copy of him :D

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  8. after reading this post, opened a new tab, youtubed Love Changes Everything by Michael Ball, hoping to download a beautiful new song...

    alas!! lolz

    thank God we all have different taste.... :D

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  9. LMWAO lal virgo, didn't you know that Andrew Lloyd Webber is pop opera music?!! A lo ti ta deuh ul ul i tia mi?!

    Me I just love these great tenors.

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  10. That poem said it all, esp when the moonlight is streaming in through your window and you can hear strains of familiar music wafting in from some unknown source...

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  11. Summers remind me of sweat, load-shedding and water shortages. I find autumns kick in the idyll better. As always, loved your post.

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  12. spam block na in dah type neuh neuh ngai hi a ninawm ka ti e. hmuh a har thei si

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  13. Miss jay..."Heat, sweat and tears" same here :-)

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  14. Enge i lo tears ve ngot na chhan, sawmte? ;)

    Amuan, i phunchiar lutuk. Misual lo danna nih kha...kei ni hmeichhe awm nem ta ngang hi chu kan blogah leh zel te hian fimkhur hi a ngai ve a momz :P

    Philo, Autumns out west have always looked beautiful to me too but alas, we don't have them here :(

    Aduh, yep, you get the picture just right ;)

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  15. Hot summer is here again...
    Your avatar tells it all.
    Sexy ve reuh lutuk....
    :)

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  16. Dam dam, Joseph, AC download tur a awm mai lo mi? :P

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  17. Misual chuan an type thiam hlei hlei zawk daih lo maw ni le ka u. Sexy ai mahin Sek-Si i pawl :D

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  18. amuana, ka ke pic i lo star thin em em kha ooo :D

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