Music Gets the Best of Me (with apologies to Sophie Ellis-Bextor)

I love walking the city at night with my iPod. (A future entry will unequivocally showcase the iPod as the greatest invention mankind has produced to date.) Just me, cloaked in anonymity, striding unabated through the darkness and shadows.  Freedom to observe, unobserved, is an incredibly powerful and motivating sense of awareness.

But without the music, it just wouldn’t work. And there are some great bands with which to create this somnambulistic symphony. Personally, it doesn’t get much better than a mix including the likes of Doves, Rubyhorse, R.E.M., Peter Murphy, Guster and China Crisis – just to name a few.

There is magic in the streets, and the lights displaying passing insights into the world and lives of those who inhabit it. I celebrate the cold, as my black overcoat protects me from the mercury not yet cognizant of the reality of imminent spring. The city has yet to fully awaken from its winter slumber and, yet, there is hope of days spent idly on patios and balconies embracing the sun’s warming rays.

But if truth be told, I revel in the solitude. For however long it is mine I will embrace it, just as I hold the music close to my core. It is the soundtrack of my life, played out across a multitude of scenes and genres, but never part of any awards program or popular accolades. It is a cacophony of my own formulation and as much as part of me as my DNA.

I’ve been privileged to know two other Marks who share my love for the sonically eclectic – Mssrs. Beck and Hudgens. They expanded my musical repertoire and turned me on to some great tunes. I’m forever grateful. And I'd be remiss to forego a shout-out to my Mom and Dad, who brought me up in an environment rich with music, from Johnny Cash, CCR and Kris Kristofferson to Neil Diamond and the Fifth Dimension. Not a day goes by that I don’t recall others who have shared music with me and I with them. Know one and all that I am in your debt.

So keep it real and keep a tune in your heart. Life’s journey is the better for it, and so we all are. I’m not sure I realize fully what heaven is, but I know hell all too well: it is a place where music finds neither a home nor an ear. And what a terrible place it must be…