Have you ever listened to the radio when a song you haven’t heard in some time begins to play, and you are suddenly brought back to a time when you formed very fond memories of those around you when the song was popular?  The years instantly peel away and you again get swept up in the emotional memories that flood you with every word sung as the melody takes you back transforming your mood.

I remember thinking back to times when I’ve met people in my life that made me notice them and galvanized me enough to remember them with warm heartfelt memories that always leave with me an affectionate smile.  We may have parted company many years ago, but they sometimes occupy my thoughts as they are still a part of me to this day.  It is precisely these people who I hold dear to me for they have imparted with me a bond that remains enduring due to the connection held.  The connection I speak about holds important elements that keep it memorable and are sometimes overlooked in many of our relationships.

For me they included ingredients of trust, empathy, respect, and another emotive quality I cannot really verbalize.  Perhaps it is a recognition in the other person that possibly shares a similar attribute that we have.  Or it is seeing them for who they truly are with appreciative eyes.  The connection does not always mean there was a romance involved, but that something else was factored into the bond when it was formed.  Maybe they entrusted you with something very personal that touched your heart and forever changed the way you looked at them.

One of my life’s passion’s was to play music, write and sing songs.  I am able to express myself on a deeper level than just by speech alone.  The music taps into something profound within all of us when we allow it to do so.  I have on occasion written songs for people who meant much to me.  The feelings I felt and the emotional connection I sustained drew upon the way I experienced the other person.  I found that the music always came first before the inspiration of the lyric developed because the music was the emotive architecture that arose from the heart.  Creating the sound scape was essential for me to craft something meaningful.  On occasion I would just write the music not yet having any lyrics written.  Sometimes I would just leave it as an instrumental.  I have tapes and tapes of old material I never fully developed.  A complete and well crafted song does sometimes include lyrics when there is a story behind the song to be told.

Prior to creating my music, I (as many others) have a soundtrack to life’s special moments.  These moments would usually occur by association, having certain songs bond to my memory, and of course having an affinity to the songs would touch me allowing for the deeper connection to occur.  Whether it be the music, the words, or whether it be both, these songs will forever imprint their charm upon my memory.  We love many songs, and appreciate the immense catalogs of music in our lives, but for me, there are few such examples of truly enchanting songs that are very close to my heart.  When you can again experience and touch the positive energy that is created from these happenings, you will find that these connective forces vibrate similar positive frequencies existing in the universe.  This may sound something disseminating from a new age philosophy, but it is in alignment to what the ancient mystics and Quantum Mechanics purport.  These disciplines have a different language to express their principles, but they have very similar semantic structures that are more alike than not.

When these songs are heard again, they can bring me back to an immediate experience that is both profound and nostalgic since they are bound to fond memories that again live in my mind.

I ask the reader; what are the songs in your catalog that takes you to another place, brings you to another time, or replenished your soul with the joy in the memory of another person close to you or once close to you?  We can form these memories and bonds that take on a life of their own.  I believe we have an ability to make associations with people with kindred spirits, and I believe the ability to connect to this essence within them just may be responsible for our remarkable and curious closeness to them.  Songs can touch us in some very enigmatic ways for reasons that our logic cannot give any clear answers for.  But in the heart, there is no need to explain any reasoning, we just feel it, and that is all that is needed to calm our vexations.  It matters not to us because we are complete in the experience we receive when these feelings arise.  We are better for having them, as they lead us to some cherished moments from our bygone history.

A song in the heart can mend a thousand thoughts.  So I say to the reader, think on this…..No, I redact that…. let your heart sustain and maintain your being!

  The heart of the fool is in his tongue; the tongue of the prudent is in his heart.

“Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ballads and Other Poems

“A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“The mind knows only what lies near the heart.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.”
― Blaise Pascal