the images of music

it's a brisk new york january night. i walk past the pink and yellow and blue glowing stores - past the warm huddled masses of dreamers and wanters behind oak counters sipping their lattes, their venetian coffees and their earl grays. tonight i don't notice them as much cause i see myself, 7 or 8 years ago, in my red corolla winding my way around the empty streets with the boys of Texas. the Ipod is set on random and a tune washes to the shores of my forgetting. DJ Sammy - Summer "i'm driving by your house, tho I know you're not home and i can tell you my love for you can still be strong after the boys of summer have gone" [cue effervescent pop dance beats] the words don't mean much to me, they're vapid and meaningless. but the music, the music calls out and it's high school again. i'm struck at the oddness of it all. i'm listening to the most common of music compositions: regular drumbeats mimicking the heartbeat, regular lyrics copying the stupidities of youth, and regular melodies evoking nothing but the most basic of teenage thoughts. the singer's voice was impetuous and undeveloped. but yet somehow, i'm caught -- the song washes over years of growth and rips away the layers of college discoveries and adult dissappointments. and i'm back in 1996, dancing to euro technobeats that were so popular with the asian kids in school. i'm back to a time of indiscretions devoid of real consequeneces, of fun in its raw form, of silly high school romances and sillier declarations of forever and ever. and it's great. before the greendays and brubeck and weezerness. i'm walking past the blinking streetlights, far past the waning day and into the untouched years of remembering, where everything was possible because possibilities have yet to be fully grasped. i'm there - with mary and lionel and quyen and lisa - with college brimming full of grand goals and a life of romance and penthouses and promises of fulfillment. it's funny why i like techno: not for it's inherent value but for its ability to unlock my long forgotten treasured memories. i can tell you my love for you will still be strong after the boys of summer have go-ne.