Phiolsopy of Music

If you know me, you know I have been having some issues of late and the way I am dealing with them is to listen to music.  Yes I am listening to music at work. I discovered that some very kind soul had loaded my all time favorite album "Late for the Sky" by Jackson Browne, in it's entirety on Youtube.  Ok I suppose that's illegal but in my own defense, I own several copies of the album so I am not ripping off Jackson by listening to it somewhere else.   I could be wrong about that, but it was a true salvation to find it yesterday.  Now, I know someone- or used to know someone- to whom Music was God.  He always acted like Music was the only truth and Musicians were holy men. I love music and I have been know to immerse myself in it to help me change my mood or just to cope, but God?  Nope.  Listening to Jackson ( and gee, we have been "companions" since I saw him open for America in the summer of 1973, so I can call him Jackson;)  )   I was struck again by the precision of his songwriting.  His lyrical content and phrasing has always blown me away.  The juxtaposition of terms ( in Fountain of Sorrow for instance he is "taken by a photograph of you") I understand what he means but the fact that you usually take a photograph and now the singer is being taken by it struck me as very cleverly phrased.    I began to think about the songs that I listened to as a teen.  More than any other type of music, I enjoyed the singer/songwriter genre of the late 60's and early 70's .  These men and women were our philosophers, our poets, our authors.  We would sit for hours and talk about the songs and what they meant to us. The philosophy of rock and roll crept into our daily conversations.  I recently told someone "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"  Our dreams, our successes and our failures - and how to handle them- are often sung about in the music of that era.  Sometimes, it was just a comfort to hear what you were feeling , eloquently expressed.  I was thinking about the music my daughter listens to.  I have about a 15 second tolerance for rap, so I am not the one to talk about it, but it seems to me that most of it is angry and intolerant.  The degradation of women is especially disconcerting.  I for one do NOT like to be called 'bitch"  no matter how you mean it.  It's still a curse word.

So I will continue to look for musicians who can sing me a story, make me think or help me dream again.  I want to be able to sing along sometimes too.