Music is a Gift with Legs

I’m a big believer in the magic of books, music, and people falling into your lap when you least expect them to and when you are most ready to appreciate their messages.

(For this reason, I’m about to download The Happiness Project since three people in as many days have referenced it to me.)

But just because the wisdom fortuitously appears at just the right time doesn’t mean its vessel hasn’t fallen into your lap previously … maybe even shimmied back and forth a bit; stirred almost otherworldy sensations down there. Somehow, though, you overlooked the deeper message the first time around.

What’s even more incredible is when the words of comfort or inspiration have been there all along — in your CD cabinet, let’s say — just waiting to be understood.

This is the case with my collection of Grooves compilation CDs that were a hand-me-down gift from a boyfriend’s mom in the mid-90s.

I have seven of them still. Two I’ve loved since college, but the rest mostly gathered dust buried there at the bottom of my alt/folk rock section. This past week I’ve been listening to volume five (one of the dusty ones) on my way to work and school. It’s been a week of transition, and a week in which I need to feel understood, and loved.

It’s been, as I like to say (quietly to myself), a sing-with-the-windows-down kinda week.

Here’s the playlist of volume five:

Hold Me Up – Velvet Crush

Layer By Layer – Steve Wynn

You R Loved – Victoria Williams

Tell Everybody I Know – Keb Mo

Partisan – Katell Keineg

Holding Back The River – Luka Bloom

Who’s So Scared – Disappear Fear

Dreams In Motion – Felix Cavaliere

Good Times – Edie Brickell

Mockingbirds – Grant Lee Buffalo

Send Me On My Way – Rusted Root

Her Man Leaves Town – Rebecca Pidgeon

Two Lovers Stop – Freedy Johnston

You And Eye – David Byrne

Oye Isabel – Iguanas

And If Venice Is Sinking – Spirit Of The West

Century Plant – Victoria Williams

I’ve had this CD in my possession for two decades (the copyright says 1994 on the disk jacket), but I’m only now finding meaning in the messages.

Only now.

This is what good music does to a soul: Seeks it out and seeps in deep just when the spirit craves it most.

And the songs, just as they were advertised at the time, are fresh. juicy. like new. 

Gifts …even in the form of hand-me-down compilations CDs … have legs, I guess. And can walk a long, long distance in order to deliver a much-needed message.