Maybe it’s Devo that triggers your body’s beat, or Donovan that renders you happily mellow, or the Yardbirds lulling you with harmonic woo that invokes an era of innocent love.
All hail memory’s soundtrack, with a nod, of course, to the return of the turntable.
Whatever your mood, can we agree that tunes set your foot to tapping – and maybe you hum, just a little?
So what if you find yourself craving the oldies! Fear not: It isn’t necessarily because you are one, though arguably that may be the case.
Ah, yes. Time marches on.
And should you wish to expand beyond rhythmic recall, you can revisit your literary favorites… Dostoevsky when you’re brooding, Miller when you’re restless, Jane Austen at any time – for her uncommon sensibility.
When vision asserts itself, you resort to photographs: your mother as a teen in 1947; your grandmother as a newlywed in 1926; great-grandparents you never knew, all immigrant eyes and hopefulness.
Sure, these are stepping stones to sentimentality, all of them slippery in their way and yet, useful.
They bridge the generations as you learn to value them, tangibly. They remind you where your people come from, poignantly. They illuminate the oddities of distance traveled, thankfully.
Oldies are not by design the “goodies” that we make them out to be as the years accumulate; we are wise to examine them carefully, to dust off those with legitimate and lasting meaning, to dismiss what is merely worn from what is well worn, and to take advantage of what is instructive. With each year, we strike bargains with growing distance.
“Time marches on” shivers with meaning.
Rain lashes the windows then dips to a drizzle. This is ideal weather to reach for Jane.
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