"Play on, Walkman, on, rewind, and give me the excess of it."

Sometimes I find myself wondering, though honestly mainly when people comment on it, about my transfixion or preoccupation with music. Is there something wrong with it? And, if by asking that question, is there something wrong with me? Until the past few years, it never struck me as potentially strange to usually have some form of music playing its soundtrack in my mind that would sometimes spontaneously burst out of my mouth or body when overwhelmed by the current of resulting emotion, and singing aloud or breaking into a little dance out on the street has often been a comforting way to exorcise consuming melodies and tummy-fluttering rhythms. However, I suppose it can be a bad thing when what you're hearing in your head supercedes instructions given you while taking a class or words spoken in conversation, but maybe that's just part of my tendency to often lose myself in my own head.

A few weeks ago, whle exploring used bookstores in the village with SiKay, a book caught my eye and, almost magnetically, drew my hand towards its face-out state on a shelf in Fiction. A few paragraphs in, and the book was gently laid on sweet Theo's counter, my hand reaching for my wallet. Now, I am lost in a gripping love affair with the sensitive, heartbreaking prose of a writer who palpably comprehends this malady, and am slowly savouring ~ in stolen glimmers of time ~ his personal take on how it feels to be lost, defined, devastated, fulfilled, conflicted, understood, crushed, strengthened, absolved, and swept away by the overpowering tides of music.


The Prologue, which preceded the following excerpt, made me cover my mouth and weep.

Chapter 1: Winter

Ground control to Major Tom:
Commencing countdown, engines on.
~ Lincoln-Mercury ad

"Julian Donahue's generation were the pioneers of portable headphone music, and he began carrying with him everywhere the soundtrack to his days when he was fifteen. When he was twenty-three and new to the city, he roamed the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, claimed it as his discovery, colonized it with his hours and his Walkman. He fell in love with Manhattan's skyline, like a first-time brothel guest falling for a seasoned professional. He mused over her reflections in the black East River at dusk, dawn, or darkest night, and each haloed light ~ in a tower or strung along the jeweled and sprawling spider legs of the Brooklyn Bridge's spans ~ hinted at some meaning, which could be understood only when made audible by music and encoded in lyrics.

Play on, Walkman, on, rewind and give me the excess of it.

Late in the evening of the day he completed his first job directing a television commercial, Julian sat in the fall air and listened to Dean Villerman on his Walkman, stared at Manhattan, and inhaled as if he'd just surfaced from a deep dive, and he had the sensation that he might never be so happy again as long as he lived. This quake of joy, inspiring and cripping, was longing, but longing for what? True love? A wife? Wealth? Music was not so specific as that. 'Love' was in most of these potent songs, of course, but they ~ the music, the light, the season ~ implied more than this, because, treacherously, Julian was swelling only with longing for longing. He felt his nerves open and turn to the world like sunflowers on the beat, but this desire could not achieve release; his body strained forward, but independent of any goal, though he did not know it for many years to come, until he proved it.

Because years later, when he had captured all that ~ love, wife, home, success, child ~ still he longed, just the same, when he listened to those same songs, now on a portable CD player, easily repeated without the moodicidal interruption of rewinding (turning spindles wheezing as batteries failed).

He felt it all again. He pressed Play and longed still."



~ from "The Song is You" by Arthur Phillips