This Is Me!

I ordered the new Mark Knopfler/Emmylou Harris album, This Is Us. It should arrive, well, soon. Who knows how these things work! I order a book and it doesn’t show up for weeks, and I really, really want it, and then I order a book on a whim and I’m not certain I’ll even read it, and it’s here tomorrow. Anyway, last week I downloaded from iTunes two songs placed on line as a teaser, and then I put the songs on my iPod. Pretty complicated process to have instant access in multiple formats to music I continue to love. I wish Bob were here to discuss it with me.

It was a beautiful day today, and I ran five miles this morning. As I ran through mile four, “This Is Us” the Knopfler/Harris duet played on the iPod, and I couldn’t stop smiling or running.

The song itself is about the life of a couple who started dating in high school, courted, married, had children, etc. etc. It’s a great cliché, and in this way the song has absolutely nothing to do with my life. I mean, this couple have lived the perfect life with each other as a couple, epitomized by the line, sung by Emmylou to her man: “You at the Sunday game, standing next to what’s his name.” In fact, her memories are only of him, she can’t even remember what’s his name’s name! I can’t relate to this relationship at all, and I’m not sure I know anybody who can do so.

But, the music is all me. When I hear the opening drum beat, and the drive of Knopfler’s guitar riffs, and the distinctive quality of his voice and then of hers, I am taken up with rock n’roll, and I am young again, and all I want is to dance and throw my arms up and whoop in joy. And the music is all me, and I don’t give a hoot what the lyrics are about. It’s a great paradox, I think. That I can’t connect at all to the lyrics, they are some fantasy, and someone else’s life, but the music resides absolutely central to my being. I love it, I breathe it, I can’t stop moving to it and with it and because of it. And I am so happy in it. Today’s running I recalled moments with the Grateful Dead, trucking along wearing scarlet begonias, and trying to get back to Tennessee Jed. When I was the environment. Running with Knopfler and Harris I was weightless, and care-full, and free. This is Me, I thought.