Songs of the Day: Phish - "Bouncing Around the Room" (live), Kula Shaker - "Govinda", Incredible Bongo Band - "Apache".

The Transcending Trail Redux: I ran 6 miles on the trail again today, and as before it brought up a lot of pleasant sensations. At the 6 mile mark my body was kind of humming, or buzzing. In moments like that, the smallest things are richer and more meaningful--breathing deeply, feeling the breeze, listening to the whispering leaves far over me, the warmth of the sun stippling through the green canopy.

It also took me back to my first memory of a transcendental experience with music. As a kid I was an enthusiastic, if ignorant, music listener (in recent years I've dug up a lot of brilliant music from that time and think, "so that wonderful stuff was out there while I was just listening to top 40 radio?"). But in spite of all the time I spent enjoying music, my first memory of really being transported elsewhere by it, in a fundamental way, is from 1986. I was 14 years old and on a little jaunt with my family out to a place some friends of ours had out somewhere in the country. I was off by myself, walking through the woods, listening to the soundtrack to the movie Legend on my clunky old cassette walkman. It was the song "Loved by the Sun", by Tangerine Dream with Jon Anderson singing. It was early autumn, leaves still on the trees but swirling on the ground as well, the dense tree canopy creating a pontillistic effect with sunlight. As the lush swells of sound blended with this gentle, leafy backdrop and Anderson's wistful, yearning vocals stirred me, I felt myself carried away. It was a moment of singularity--everything else beyond the little clearing I was in just vanished and it was though I was a million miles from home or anyone else at all. This symbiosis of sound, sights, and feelings was overwhelming, and I felt myself break down and soar at the same time. At that moment a little window opened up and I was connected to a greater beauty I didn't understand at all on an intellectual level, but which felt like the ultimate answer at an instinctual, visceral level. I'd had many moments of minor ecstasy listening to music before that, but that day changed my understanding of what music could do--what its own voice could say, and what greater things it could transport you to. I've never been the same since.

Labels: Running