It’s always music that serves as a constant reminder of who I am, what and why I do what I do. 
Sure, a beautifully designed and executed website or consumer product, any buildings by the two Franks (Gehry and Lloyd Wright) and Paul Rudolph, the works of Miro, Pollock and Rothko will always stop me in my tracks, as will standing at the foot of any ancient mountain or looking across and expanse of open water.
But it’s the exceptional significance of music, and the place that it occupies in my mind for which I’ve reserved a more visceral, emotional appreciation. It’s probably lost on today’s consumer, or music fan, for whom music can be purely ephemeral to a widely fragmented array of experiences. For me, however, there is still a straight and direct line from a song I hear and know, through a collection of associated memories to an emotive response and the constant reminder of my identity. I suppose it can be attributed to just how much music I’ve listened to over the span of my life, and that it’s always been related to what I do in media and technology.
I remember an August morning, several years ago, when I was living in New York. Just the day before, I’d become a US Permanent Resident after a number of years of living and working under an O-1… and before that… an H-1B visa. I wanted to celebrate in a way that I usually celebrated a personal, professional or life accomplishment as well as the start of a new day… with a morning run around the 6 mile outer loop in Central Park. It was hot that morning, the sun was already up, reaching under the canopy. Heating up the moist overnight air that hung below the trees south of 75th. As I cruised up the east side of the loop, under the cat sculpture, around the Met, to where the loop runs parallel to 5th Avenue as you pass the Guggenheim, I noticed how quiet the park was that morning. It was, after all, August in New York where, in a city of 8 million people, you could find yourself alone. Or so you might think. So after dropping down toward Lenox, above the north transverse and adjacent to the Harlem Meer, where the road was empty, I started to hear this music. The volume increased as I continued to run north, then started the turn west at 110th. As I approached the source I recognized what the song was, and in a few more steps, looked up the hill on my left, and there was a guy, standing in among the trees, kind of dancing, gyrating to the music. And at his feet was a boombox. And out of that boombox, blared James Brown’s “Living In America”. And as I ran I smiled and choked in a mix of emotion that I can recall in an instant if I hear that song today. I remember at the time thinking… how strange… this song, this place, this moment… all three combining forces to enshrine the significance of a pivotal life change for me. The park has always had a special allure for me, and even with my new status, that morning’s run was like any of the thousands of other morning runs I’d done in the park. And living in Canada, some 25 years ago when that song was released, it held no special significance for me, other than recognizing its groove. And yet there it was that morning, and since that day, it will always have a meaning, an association and a significance reserved for my most treasured musical recollections.
This has happened two other times… each occasion while running. A few days ago, I was on my usual 6 mile morning run. Perfect morning, cooler, sunny… best time of year in Miami, and seemingly a morning run like any of the thousands of other morning runs I’ve done along the same route. I went around the circle in CocoPlum, and turned under the banyan trees onto Old Cutler, where the cars always accordion in the traffic flow. And right there, stopped, was a guy in a Mazda Miata, windows open, radio on. And out of the open windows came a song that is so woven into my psyche, so much a part of my past, as Miami, and running are part of my present and future… that I again asked, why this song, this place, this moment? Growing up in Canada, you could not avoid the influence of the music of The Guess Who. Randy Bachman’s writing, guitar playing, Burton Cummings’ vocals… stretching outward from the windripped wheatfields of Winnipeg, wrapping the country in their effusive prairie soul-sparkled rock. Cummings’ voice, some 40+ years on, still stands as one of the most recognizable in rock. And Bachman’s legacy… is ensured as a guitar icon with both The Guess Who and later, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, a writer of one of the most widely placed consumer product-associated songs – Takin’ Care Of Business, and lately, Guitarchives label owner… protecting the legacy of Lenny Breau and Howard Roberts. American Woman, No Sugar Tonight, These Eyes… these songs reached south from the 49th parallel… deep into the heart of America… and so, apparently, did No Time… all the way down to Coral Gables, Florida, and that morning run. And hearing it, I wondered if there was anyone, anyone around who would feel what I felt about that song, that place, that morning. How it’s as much a part of me as anything I know about myself. As while even photographic memories fade… the song remains the same.
And then there was the third occasion… here, in context from a previous post where I wrote about completing my first Ironman… “I was surprised I wasn’t more emotional at the finish or during my first Ironman. I remember vividly when I ran my first marathon, how at mile 22 there was nobody else around me, it had been raining in biblical proportions for the last 10 miles, I was trudging and sloshing along, my feet literally floating in my shoes, and there was a trailer at the side of the course in Kennedy Park on South Bayshore in the Grove, with a PA system playing out Bob Seger’s woefully overexposed GM soundtrack chorus “Like A Rock”. Music is such an emotional cue for me, and that song, at that moment, did me in that day – just the realization that I was about to do something I hadn’t really had as a life goal, but threw it out there, challenged myself and was on the threshold of completing it.”
So for me, this humbling synchronicity, this extraordinary triumvirate of “this song, this place, this moment”… frankly, I can’t experience it enough in this lifetime.
