Me 'n Taylor

I love country music. I love the lyrics and the melodies and the sing-along-ableness(?) and the combination of it all put together.

So a couple months ago when I knew the kiddos and I would be traveling to the states for a quick visit I decided to spend some of my birthday money on a new CD (what am I, ten?). I chose Taylor Swift's Fearless album (repeat: what am I, ten?).

I have no shame.

Now, the beauty of living overseas and being waaaaay behind on music and movies is that we can buy other people's 'old' music and and movies that have been out for years and it still feels brand new and cutting edge to us cause we haven't heard the songs played a trazillion times on WNCI.

So, I happily did some online shopping, dropped Taylor Swift's album (the special edition with DVD! Hooray!) into my virtual shopping cart, paid a few bucks for it, sent it off to my parent's house and got excited to listen to it when I would arrive on American soil.

One bad thing about living in a city of four or more million people is that I don't get to drive around for long amounts of time on country roads in a comfortable well-climate controlled vehicle with a CD player and decent speakers. I think we have a radio in our vehicle, but what do I want to listen to?... Arabic news?  Middle Eastern disco tunes?

Um. No thanks.

Sometimes I do grab my iPod and portable speakers, throw them up on the dash and try to imagine the long car ride in a comfortable well-climate controlled vehicle with a CD player and decent speakers. But I never can quite imagine away all the traffic jams, staring men and clouds of pollution and turn them into gorgeous trees, open country roads and fresh crisp air.

But in the U.S., I didn't need to imagine any of it. It was real.

Wow. This story is waaaaay longer than I planned.

Can you believe I'm not to my point yet?

Actually, I don't know if you could actually say that this post has a 'point.' Can you call something a 'point' if it is trivial, silly and useless?

Aghh. Who cares.

Getting on with it...

Me and Taylor rode everywhere together. I must have listened to that album fifty times.

Wait. Let me check that math.

50 x approx. 79 mins = 65.8 hours of listening

Hhhmmmm. That's probably a little high. But I think you get the point. I drove a LOT. And if I was driving, I was listening to her (me) singing. Or me mumbling along with her singing. I never did quite get all the lyrics down. But I tried... oh I tried! At one point in a moment filled with hope I did turn on the radio. After five minutes I became frustrated at the amount of commericials and remained faithful to my CD from that point on out.

Anyway, I loved all my drives with Taylor. There is something about that open road, about good music, about tall trees and a comfortable seat that is so refreshing and freeing and wonderful. It's a privilege to enjoy those things. I enjoyed every moment and hopefully I didn't harm my children's tiny ear drums in the process. I never did ask them what they would like to listen too...

I love that music has the ability to transport me, to conjure up feelings that have been absent a long time, or even feelings that I never really had in the first place. Singing along, I was fifteen again taking a big breath before walking through the doors of the high school for the first time. I was having flashbacks of getting pebbles thrown at my window, of a first kiss, of feeling geeky in the bleachers and remembering when I was told 'forever and always'...

Music brings up what's inside. It brings the raw and the honest and the beautiful to the surface. I like that about music. I like that about Taylor.