Thanksgiving and Music

It's Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada and I'm still full from last night's turkey. As I write, the house is quiet, the calm before everyone arises. The Avett Brothers' The Gleam playing softly in the background. I'm tired, but the music makes me smile, makes me relax and ease into the day. Actually, whatever mood I'm in, whatever my day has been, music always makes a space in the seeming chaos around me. I'm thankful for music.

I wish, of course, that I had more time for sustained listening, the kind of listening that I was able to do in high school and in university. It's the kind of listening nicely described in a recent blog post at Heidi's Cafe. She writes,

Last night I was sitting in my living room in the near dark listening intently to one of the 4 CDs in my fabulous new Motown Box set. I put it on repeat for a few times. It's been a long time since I listened to music this way. I remember losing whole afternoons and evenings listening to one side of a LP over and over again or putting a tape on my walkman on a repeat loop until the batteries wore out. Perhaps I listened to music this way because "repeat" was the path of least resistance. Or, perhaps, because I realized then that there is something incredible to be gained by listening carefully to every note, every tiny drop of sound, and every word of an album.

Like her, I don't often have that kind of time. Maybe that's why this morning feels like such a gift (I'm now on to Gomez's How We Operate). I usually have only snatches of time, moments when music can become that brief respite I need during the day. It's usually in my car, but sometimes in my office for five minutes, the door closed and the perfect song cued up. Just enough to get me through the rest of my day, a couple of minutes when I'm thinking about the music and not students and meetings and grading and the hundred other things I have to do.

And that's really why I host Steel Belted Radio. That time in the studio every week is a time when everything else just melts away. All the stress, all the concerns of the day are just gone. For that hour I'm only listening to music, but more than that, I'm programming music that I hope will give the listeners those little moments of respite from their own days, as they sit in their cars in traffic or close the doors to their offices or chop vegetables for supper.

So, as I sit here listening to Gomez doing "Charlie Patton Songs," I'm thinking about how thankful I am for music. The way I listen has, by necessity, changed, but I think music is now as important in my life as it ever was. I hope it is for you, too.