About a Song

Been spending most of my time listening to music–and boy, sure have a lot of that in my hands at the moment- with around 160 leeched tracks on round-the clock play, I do hope the audience at home enjoy it :D.  which have encouraged me to do a post on a particular one.

Love is a mixtape: Life and loss, one song at a time, book authored by music critic Rob Sheffield, a  memoir of his relationship with his wife, Renée Crist, prior to her dying of pulmonary embolism. I’ve been wanting to read it but haven’t had the chance, but here’s to describe it:  Sheffield was a “shy, skinny, Irish Catholic geek from Boston” when he first met Renée. Southern born and bred, “she was warm and loud and impulsive.” They had nothing in common except a love of music, June Sawyers, Booklist reviewed.

Life, a mixtape when it comes to ourselves. And losses. And gains. We’re drawn most to music that reflects, if not deflects, the life we’re willing to take in. Picturesque-like, flowing in along with the rhymes and rhythms, filling in the chambers of vast hollowness. Satire to sweetness, sorrow to serenity, static to silence, music delivers us to a soundscape expanding across a novel dimension, a Somewhereland, that we escape to, then emerge from.

Sometimes the songs are too beautiful.

So I stumbled upon this song, it’s dance/house by genre, pop in nature. Umptidity pop, made to stick in your head, I hum it instantly. Taken a second glance, lyrics and all, it’s about looking back at life. It doesn’t take you off to a flight of fancy, or slams you down to earth, but it keeps you walking, at least until you cross path with another song the musician has to offer.

Looking back, at life, a paradox. To what point of understanding in life should we walk far enough to be able to look back?

There are times, surely, when looking back takes more courage than looking ahead, as looking through our own eyes does than through another person’s. Looking back through Sheffield’s eyes would probably more bearable than having our own looking at a loved one, dying in our arms.

Take a second glance, listen to the mixtape. Music becomes a question. It asks us this, how far you’ve walked to be able to feel this one? Or this? Or this?, as the mixtape plays on. And there we are, up on a valley at Somewhereland, telling ourselves how far we’ve come, knowing that looking back, it wouldn’t be in vain, it would seem like a string of melodic chorus.

Love is a mixtape. It’s like a flashback, it’s like a dream, it’s like all the things you can fit inside a memory.

Note: This is hardly a music review though, just sharing a thought. Check also mixtapes compiled by TWBE’s Sound Advice.

Image (modified) by ISO50 aka Tycho.

Translate to Bahasa Indonesia

---