My ancient iPod now has only one job: storing my music library of 765 tracks. Some of these performances bring me to tears when I listen to them. Many are bound to experiences in my life, and hearing them connects me to those powerful memories in a way that no other sense — save perhaps smell — can equal.
You probably have this kind of relationship with music. Your taste may vary dramatically from mine, the intensity of your connection may be different, but there’s no argument that music is an important ingredient in most human lives.
Long ago, my father played drums in a dance band, Billy Merrin and His Commanders, on the weekends. A few years before he died, I tracked down a collection of old recordings of his band. I vividly remember his delight and animation when he began listening once again to the music he had helped to create sixty years earlier.
“People haven’t always been there for me but music always has.”
—Taylor Swift
If/when I am old and feeble, unable to do much, I want to have my music at hand. (On shuffle, please.) I hope I will still be able to listen and recall and remember. I want to sing along when the spirit moves me and feel the intense wondrous emotions that music has the power to grant.
… Dolly Parton shared a similar sentiment:
“Music, I suppose, will be the thing that sustains me in the time of my life when I am too old for sex and not quite ready to meet God. It has always been an essential part of me.“