Country-tinged music from when I was a kid

   I never really cared much for American country music, in fact, I never liked it at all, until the last few years, when I began to discover some of it that I found both soothing and sad, in ways that spoke to my own inner hurt. I discovered most of this music, mostly country-tinged music rather than standard country, by searching the internet and music blogs that I respected, and found that nearly all of the music from this category that I liked had been recorded in the period from the late nineteen sixties through the mid nineteen seventies. I can't tell whether knowing the years that the music was recorded somehow influenced my choice to like it, or if the music from that period had a flavor and sound distinct to that time, but pretty much without fail it is only that period which I like.
   I don't believe it a coincidence that this country music that I like is sad in sound (not all country music is sad), because the music from this time that I am writing about coincides with a time in my life that started as seemingly stable (as far as I can remember), to a time filled with pain and crippling anxiety, due in no small part to my parent's bitter separation and eventual divorce. It's as if the music is able to bring me back emotionally to that time, drop me in the pain there, and allow me to gradually experience it as an adult in a way that I couldn't withstand years ago, so I just stuffed it down the best that I could.
   So now, when I listen to certain country-styled music from that time, it's like I've split off into two people, and one of these people has the task of experiencing new things in a way that connects some of the past to the other half that still lives mostly in the present. It's helps me to get back to places that I had previously shut out emotionally, and although it can make me sad, I feel like it helps me to partially loosen some of the knots that restrict me internally.
   When I used to engage in visual art-making regularly, I used to subscribe to the idea that content, or ideas, should determine the form. When it comes to my emotional life and memories, it seems that form can justifiably help to determine content as well; without this possibility, I doubt that I would have expereienced some of these feelings enabled by my exploration of this music.

The cover from the album featuring a song which never fails
to move me, released when I was four or five years old.