What's Up?

No, I'm not offering a casual salutation with today's header (although it can certainly be taken as such if you like...:-)

What's Up? is the title of a song made famous by a group called "4 Non-Blondes," which was popular in the mid-1990's. Lots of guitar riffs, a lyric which begins with a less-than-optimistic line, twenty-five years and my life is still trying to get up that great big hill... (and so forth.) My point in writing this is not to explore the poetry of the song (although that would be interesting) but rather to discuss how powerful music can be as a catalyst for emotional recall.

I have owned this cd since it came out, but had probably not listened to it in close to 10 years. We all have those cds...the ones that take up space in the folder, yet aren't disposable. Anyway, for whatever reason, I happened to pull it out in the car today and stuck it in the cd player. I immediately clicked ahead to What's Up? just because I recalled having liked it. Well, that's where the story gets interesting...

Within the first 10 seconds, I was absolutely transported to summer, 1994. That was a particularly nice time for me...I was working at a summer theatre called The Lost Colony in Manteo, NC. I had a pretty girlfriend who worked in the costume shop, a raggedy red convertible, and I was being paid to live at the beach. I was barely 24 years old (actually, I turned 24 during the rehearsal period) and life was good. It was one of those hopeful, happy times that remind us that life is worth living. (Side note...I can remember calling home on the Sunday night of the Tony Awards and telling my dad how I felt like I really "belonged" for the first time in my life.)

Back to the story...as soon as this not-heard-in-a-while music started to play, I listened with great happiness for a minute or so, and that is when it got weird. I realized that there were honest-to-God tears in my eyes, and a growing flutter in the pit of my stomach. I wasn't sad...it was a far more textured emotion than sadness...a wistful yet somehow pleasant melancholia would be the best way I could describe it. I had to turn it off, not because the experience was painful. It was...intense. I was having happy memories, but there was a tinge of regret at their being only memories. It was like seeing long-lost friends standing before you, but evaporating when you tried to touch or talk to them.

What does this mean? I suppose it means that I am at what most statistics would say is the half-way point of my life, and I am starting to realize the finite nature of things. Not being pessimistic, but there are so many things I will never experience again...and summer of 1994 is among them. There are, of course, good and special times to come, but that particular experience is gone forever. Such is the way of life. However, memories make us who we are, and even the ones you regret being "just memories" stand as proof of a life well-lived.

The comedian Jackie Gleason put it best:

"Acting young isn't what makes you young. But if you've got some memories, some good memories of when you were young, that's what keeps you young."

-FLT3