Lovin' you?

   I don't listen to music of my own choosing as much as I used to. I now often prefer silence, the radio (usually classical, jazz or progressive talk radio) and the (sometime) desire to listen to what's going on within me physically and emotionally, though when I do want to choose my music, I'm often in my car, so I plug in my iPhone to play what I've loaded onto it.
   Every so often I connect the phone to my computer at home to change what I've put there, but over the last three years or so there's almost always a consistent selection of soft pop music from the nineteen seventies.
   For most of the year ninety seventy I was six years old (turning seven only in December), and the music  years that I generally find myself drawn to the most are those from approximately nineteen seventy three to nineteen seventy six. Much of the music on these playlists is pretty commercial pop stuff, and though I usually dislike pretty intensely most pop music, this music has content for me that surpasses its' sound; it indexes a time in my life that carries strong emotional weight, and coincides with a very painful time. This is the period when my parents marriage was falling apart as was I on the inside.
   If you had asked me in my earlier adult life if I would want to listen to music that elicits painful memories, I'm pretty sure that I would have said no, but as I've gotten older I've learned that these associations can help to bring forth things that I had previously consciously forgotten, and having these come to light allows me to look at them, if I choose.
   If someone that I know sees me listening to this kind of music they are generally surprised, and will sometimes say to me, "do you like this music?". If I am asked this, I will usually reply, "I'm not sure, but I know it", and that answer, although sounding somewhat cryptic, is in fact straight to the point.

The single record cover of one of the songs often on my iPhone, circa 1975