away, we're bound away...

there are moments when you find yourself sitting on the subway, and a song comes up on your ipod and catches you completely off guard, either because you hadn't thought about that song in quite some time, the way a certain introduction seeps its way into your bones, the history you have with it, or because it's just so right.

while rumbling over the manhattan bridge the other night, chanticleer's "shenandoah" popped up amidst my shuffle of outkast, head automatica, fiona apple, and radiohead. the solitary baritone not only snapped me out of my usual subway daze and into the reality of my present status as a passenger looking out onto the new york skyline passing by, but also evoked a deep melancholy far down within me, like i was the one singing to a river, and a love, so far away it's symbolic of everything you've ever left behind.


i do have a history with this song. i've sang it in several choral settings and my mother has declared a fascist state with a box of tissues over the tv whenever the movie is on tcm or amc. but it's not creating harmonies on a stage with my high school chamber choir in front of a crowd of 1000 or more parents, nor patting my tear-stained mother on the back as she lamented over the fate of james stewart's family, that cuts me to the quick. it is what isn't there; it's the shenandoah.

it's knowing that some day, i'm going to look back and i'm going to have my own symbolic river to sing about. i don't really have one now. i'm not too far away from where i was a few years ago, everything is still relatively within my grasp. i'd even have to say that my childhood isn't so far off-- i still have a lot of growing to do even with rent and bills and a full-time job. but in a few years, it might, and probably will, change. i will be removed from this, from where i am at this very moment, and that is when my heart will break from something that's so far away it might've never even existed. it's inevitable. i'm bound away. and possibly "seven long years" may mean exactly "seven long years." it's all too close to how i've been feeling lately.

music is a funny thing. it can take you to places you've been, to places you haven't, and places where only you know the location. it can make a 22 year old who hasn't lost much in her life feel like she's lost a piece that can't be retrieved. at the same time, music has the capability to make anyone, even sad bastards like myself, feel on top of the world for two minutes 46 seconds. it lulls babies to sleep, and incites anger beyond bound. it tells stories, it is aural emotion, it is blood through the veins. that is why it is so important. that is why i care so much about it. that is why i am here. that is why i will be there.

that is why.


/jen/