Ry Cooder plays an homage to Johnny Cash as I type, transmuting an old song across the years. I’m 14 again, hearing Johnny himself start the guitar in its ba-thump, ba-thump that makes the floor throb under my feet (turn it up, Susan!) until I have to stand, have to grab her two hands and swing her away from me in a jitterbug-swing step. Holding hands, we bob and two-step, turn and skip until the song ends: I Walk The Line, 16 Tons. We dance our way toward being a couple with our noses buried in the boys’ freshly-ironed shirts and sex and poodle skirts and driving and jobs and drinking and independence and college and responsibility and leaving home and living on our own, but not yet, not yet. Now, we just dance.
***
For Thanksgiving dinner music, my son-in-law chooses Brahms piano sonatas that linger in the air like the wash of lavender-blue light across the Bay as the earth turns away from the sun for the night. We are happy together, safe, sophisticated, amusing and amused, weaving conversation and love across the table full of chicken and gravies and yams and chard that we cooked together. For now, this is eternal. Bless the gift of music and friends and family.
Never let this go, not when it changes, not when it ends.
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Lovely, lovely, lovely. Wonderful use of detail. Of the small moment, the tiny frame. I love the way the music weaves in here. I recently had a writing teacher talk about how sound creates a spherical world on the page. I think music does it even better, because it adds time to the sphere. These are wonderful moments in time!
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