“Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time.”
DZ is a veteran traveler who likes to fill his ear holes with tunes. Not just any tunes. But tunes he likes. So whether he’s flying abroad (pre-Covid) or roadtripping across the U.S., he breaks out a couple of second-hand iPod Minis, each loaded with a thousand or so tunes – from RHCP to Beck (and Jeff Beck) to Beethoven. He’ll plug in the pod in and queue up his music.
Which got us thinking: How important is music to the traveler?
Passengers in airports sport their Beats like athletes making the pre-game locker room walk. Wooks and heads heading to a music festival call up the playlist someone’s no doubt curated of the acts they’re gonna see. Heck, the Merry Pranksters took a whole entourage on the road with them on their trips.
Frankly, it just makes living easier on the ears and soul.
Is music heaven-sent? Kurt Vonnegut would wager so. “Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God. It is so extraordinarily full of magic, and in tough times of my life, I can listen to music and it makes such a difference.”
Robin Williams’ character in August Rush asked, “You know what music is? God’s little reminder that there’s something else besides us in this universe; harmonic connection between all living things, everywhere, even the stars.”
The web tells us Plato declared music “a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”
The Role Music Plays
American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat said, “art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time.” Those of Old England said to “balter” is to dance gracelessly, without particular art or skill, but perhaps with some enjoyment, even if others couldn’t hear the music in our own heads.
Whether you’re calling up a Spotify or Apple Music playlist curated by a stranger, or listing to your own library, platform and channel surfing can be rewarding.
Music makes life come to life. It’s a spice that enlivens the experience. It comes in all forms. Imagine our glee when roadtripping across the Southeast, a visit to a friend in Florence, Alabama, put us…
1. In the heart of Muscle Shoals. Google the “Swampers” session musicians who backed countless top-10 hits; and
2. A jaunt along he Natchez Trace Parkway conveniently put us in Nashville and the Ryman Auditorium for an evening with bluegrass picker Ricky Skaggs.
A few chance encounters and happenstance turns turned the trip into a seriously bad-ass adventure.
And we have music to thank.
Music plays that kind of role. It’s transcendental, transformational, downright spiritual, even for non-believers. Sitting at the campsite at Gunter Hill Campground outside Montgomery, Alabama, a butterfly lit upon the picnic table beside Robbie. At first kinda freaked, she settled into its presence.
This butterfly just wouldn’t flutter by. We didn’t think much of it. That is, until John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery” came on Spotify. Then things dawned on us, like a sun’s rays breaking from behind the clouds.
That day was the second anniversary of her mother’s passing.
Something bigger than two people in a campground was in motion here. It shoulda been no shocker. Music – and nature – can play that role in our lives.
Tunes provide the canvas upon which your aural memories will be painted, the ones that hopefully one day down the road will trigger those “Remember that time we were in Montgomery and that butterfly dropped by…?”
Music opens, changes and (hopefully) blows minds.
What;s your go-to library? The sources are plenty…
– Queue it up. When heading to a music festival, standard operating procedure is to queue up songs from acts that will be performing – or to look for a Spotify playlist your crew or someone else has curated featuring those same acts.
– Go terrestrial. When camping in or near a city, we search for local FM stations to hear what the locals are listening to. We may not dig it, but we appreciate the local flavor. On our spring 2021 roadtrip to Montana, we discovered Helena’s Rock 963. Theydished out Velvet Revolver, Slipknot and Metallica. The station in Mineral Wells, Texas, played Michael Jackson, Flock of Seagulls, Ed Sheeran, Men At Work, and the latest rock and country tunes.
- What’s your comfort tunes? Some stations are just safe, go-to standards. Montana’s KGLT Montana Public Radio isn’t just another public radio station. Their cloud goes well beyond Big Sky and “eclectic” doesn’t begin to describe their playlist., from blues to Americana to rock, jazz, classical – all deep tracks rarely heard on terrestrial radio. Click and learn.
When all else fails, we’ll queue up our local station WLRN for old standards and all the shows we tune into back home. One Friday driving along Florida’s Ocala National Forest, NPR’s Science Friday served up a surprising find – scientific journalist John McPhee’s “Annals of the Former World.” He helped explain the nature of time on earth, and our perception of it. Kinda put things in perspective.
It was a true chance encounter with our safety station, when we weren’t quite into channel surfing at the moment.
If music is how we decorate time, how do you pass your time when driving the open road…?