Soulfood

If I had to choose between music and books I don't know what I'd do.  Fortunately that's one of those stupid hypothetical questions that I'll never have to answer.

 I love books.  I haven't been without a book since about the age of 8.   I've read so many, good and great.   I quit wasting my time on mediocre books long ago.  The written word can be a beautiful thing.  Good stories transport me to different worlds.  One well crafted sentence can make me not only appreciate it on its own merit, but also make me look deep into my thoughts, beliefs and ideas.  Books have shaped my view of the world.  

But music....... well, music can stir me to the core of my being.  I close my eyes, feel the beat, let myself get lost in every note.   Turn it up.......   my life has a soundtrack.  So many songs take me back to past times in my life and make me remember how happy I was, or how sad.  And they do it over and over again, every time I hear them.

When I hear Roy Orbison & Patsy Cline I can see my parents dancing around the living room in the mid 60's.  Jackson 5 and the Monkees take me back to the bubble gum stuff I listened to in the early 70's.  Teenage years were spent listening to Bob Seger, Fleetwood Mac and Pink Floyd.  The early 80's was a musical awakening when I was exposed to new sounds by my first love.  David Bowie, Sly Stone, Motown, Beatles, too many to list.  I still have my favorites.  Music I listen to over and over again.

I'm not a music fanatic.  My memory is too bad to remember every band's name, let alone the songs and what albums they come from.  But I know what I love.  I know it when I hear it and to this day it can transform me.  

Other than a few favorites that have been read over and over again, there are few books that stir such emotion in me.  Books feed my brain and quench my thirst for new information.  But music feeds my soul.  I don't think I could live without it.