Backward

I love that song, from the Rascal Flatts about playing a country song backward. I have to admit, I'm not much of a country music aficiondo. Not because I have anything against country music, I've just never really been exposed to it. My father was a musician. From the big band era. I grew up on My Cup Runneth Over with Love and Danny Boy. Barbra Streisand, and when Dad really got with it, we moved on to John Denver. He was a gifted pianist. A gifted any kind of instrument he ever picked up. He played by ear and could hear a song on the radio and somehow just make it happen as soon as he had an instrument in his hands. When I was growing up I'd fall asleep many nights to my father at the piano, playing, sometimes singing, always making love to the keys. There was magic there. I miss it. I miss him.

And I've recently been exposed to country music. Well, not all that recently. I saw Kenny Rogers in concert a few years ago. In Vegas. Linda Davis was his back up. So I'm sitting there and he's playing to his crowd and song after song he talks about how he knows everyone knows this one and invites them all to sing alone (us all, I guess) and they all burst into song and I've never heard the tune before. Let alone the words. I'll never forget when he introduced this song called Lucille. Everyone went crazy. It was the oldest. The most famous. The best loved. I'd never heard it before in my life.

And then Linda Davis came on. I didn't know if she was supposed to be famous or not - if to that crowd she was famous. She could have been a waitress for all I knew. She took the mic and after much Kenny gushing started to sing. I bought her cd immediately. And in about a week, knew every word to every song. I was semi-hooked on country music.

Then came Colin Raye and his song about Grandma and Grandpa and 'don't give up on me.' Now that was a song. I bought that cd, too. And soon knew every word to every song. I've found a few others, more recently as I'm married to a man who loves country music. But then he loves rock and roll, too. Led Zeppelin variety. Eagles and Hotel California. And he loves the Mama and Papas and will even listen to Celine Dion and Barry Manilow if I'm in his good graces. This past weekend we took a road trip to Amish country and did Pink Floyd's The Wall. Now there's a road trip album. A rock opera that was so loaded with talent it should have won every music award every created. Maybe it did. In it's era, my era, to me it was just good songs. I was completely unaware of the rare piece of art it really was.

We're all just bricks in the wall. Or do I have that backwards? We all put bricks in walls. We build walls and then hate the confinement. We freeze ourselves out from pain and disappointment, live a lifetime semi-numb, and then we reach a point where the numbness wears off, where the 'drugs' we took to get on with the show, no longer work. And we start to feel. The walls come crumbling down. And so often times, we wish we could go backward.

I saw an old movie tonight. Click. With Adam Sandler. It's a great movie. Entertaining. Funny. Light. Until it isn't. He has this magic remote that lets him fast forward to all the things he wants in life. Mostly to his promotions that make him a mint and are supposed to solidify a great life with the wife and kids he adores, but never makes priorities. And the thing is, much like life, when he fast forwarded, he went on auto pilot. He went through the motions, waiting to get where he really wanted to be. But when he got there, he found that, in missing all of the daily grind, the daily ups and downs and boring family dinners, he'd missed all of life. He was the CEO, and he was virtually alone. Of course, in the end of the movie, Adam Sandler got to go backward and do it all over again, to get it right.

Just like that country song. When you sing a country song backward you get your best friend Jack back, your first and second wife back. You get it all back.

But to what end? To make life perfect? Is that what we want? Perfection? No lessons to learn. No progress to make? No surprises? Or do we just need to appreciate each moment, as we have it? Live life. Experience every moment. Be aware of the breath and grateful that we are alive?

I don't know, maybe I've got it all backward...

But I do like country music.