I was seventeen lying on the grass outside our basement window looking up at the sky and watching the clouds. Led Zeppelin was filtering through the screen from the record player turned up as loud as possible. In a little while I would be leaving for the airport to visit my family in England for the summer. I was struggling with lots of emotions. Leaving my Mom, my friends, traveling to see people I had never met before; a teenage tangle of anticipation and uncertainty. I can feel that moment as soon as I hear, Jimmy Page’s iconic guitar and Robert Plant sing, “There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold, and she’s buying a stairway to heaven…”

I can remember moments in my life because of the association with a song that I loved. I think we all can. Music is a powerful elixir. It strums along with loves, woes and dreams. I catch a feeling in my heart even in the opening bars of songs and just that much can drop me in a time or place.

If there was a soundtrack to my life, here are but a few of the tunes that would be featured.

You’ve got a Friend; by Carole King; the perfect antidote to the bumps along the way.   The opening notes of California played on the Dulcimer by Joni Mitchell resound within me. There is a kind of happiness with a twinge of melancholy that is the joy and heartbreak of her songs.

The Circle Game over the years has become part of my melody. The words renewed with my children. It sang them to sleep, and the markings of childhood to adulthood have a kind of reverence that I’m sure even Joni couldn’t have imagined in the 70’s. “We’re captive on a carousel of time, we can’t return, we can only look behind from where we came and go round and round and round in the circle game…”

John Lennon. “Because the world is round it turns me on….”

Crosby Stills and Nash, the Dejavu album. I bought it at Sam the Record Man at Bayview Village with my Dad. He drove me there in his red Pontiac convertible. Came home and played it over and over again on my green portable record player that sat on the side table in our living room with the blue lamp. If I am on a train, traveling, Simon and Garfunkle’s America becomes part of the syncopated rhythm of the rails as the landscape distances itself in a rush out the window. And, Van Morrison’s Moon Dance, “the night’s magic seems to whisper and hush…”. Well, it’s always in the back pocket of my faded jeans, in the rising of the August moon, and in just holding hands.

This month I’m going to see James Taylor with my daughter. My husband doesn’t get it. He can’t understand why I would want to go to see him playing the guitar and still singing ‘at his age’. It’s not looking back or living in the past. These are the sounds of my life. Me and James and the music, have all gone down the road together. I hope he plays all the songs I love. “Dreaming the dreams I’ve dreamed my friends, loving the love I’ve loved…”

Here is a link to Stairway to Heaven live in Madison Square Gardens New York 1973
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q7Vr3yQYWQ

And, James Taylor live at BBC studios, 1970
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEcsp9AIQzY