I wish there were means for us to be able to situate ourselves in songs. I’d choose – War by Edwin Starr, Will you be There by Michael Jackson, and Dazzling Blue by Paul Simon. (Let’s agree there are many more, these are only representatives.) We probably need time machines to insert ourselves and be actors to that poetry. That would allow us to be with the artistes – experience first hand the excitement of ‘making’ the song.
I am here. I listen to this song.
Perhaps we don’t need time machines. We have learnt about time and time is strictly linear. What if it is not? What if the songwriters planned for their music to escape the constructs of time? Why be sentimental of a poetic paragraph that was intended to violate the linearity of time? It is available to me by sheer means of storage. We go together like a wink and a smile. And I wonder if I need time machines at all.
All the music and poetry that makes my life beautiful is timeless. But, we will have to understand what timeless means. It is not that this music and poetry will be appreciated as the years go by. Timeless assumes that generations to come will appreciate without contemporary constructs.
Timeless is not that.
These songs, the music and the poetry are time machines in themselves. So, will the ‘oldies’ take you back to the 60′s or the 70′s. I doubt. Unless I have missed a major leap in what physics can help us do – we cannot “go” back there. But the smart songwriters and the musicians of the days gone by, used a wonderful trick: they laced their music; dipped in the ethos of the moment and released it. With each mix of the note and the syllable they created a portal for us.
Whether we ‘logged in’ was up to us; and for the registered users – they offered a journey that time itself could not wipe – from history, from our memory.
Loved the concept of ‘registered users’ for specific music. Useful concept!
I had a suspicion that this post would resonate, somehow