DEDICATION

To the South There Lies the Tales Untold

Suggested listening: “Eldorado,” by Electric Light Orchestra

I have to admit it; I have the proclivity to absolutely obsess over a song. I can listen to the same song over and over and over again, then listen to it some more. I have been known to listen to the same song on repeat for an hour, maybe more. I am sure it is sickening to those who have had the burden of living with me. I realize it, but this is why I mindfully utilize self-control in the presence of others and why, lucky for them, I have invested in a nice set of headphones.

I think it is safe to say I inherited this what surely many consider an unfortunate habit when I was very young. My pops was a real creature of habit for all things that he loved, and music was no exception. There was no mistaking when my dad liked a song. He would go to the record store and buy the CD if he did not have it already, put it in the nine-disk changer of his mid-life crisis mobile, a ’98 cherry red Corvette convertible ("the year Chevy changed the body-style," he would always boast) and that was it.

We always knew when he was home because we could hear the song he was currently hooked on deafening the neighbors as he came barreling down the block, pulling into the driveway and always letting the song play out. I thought it was hilarious but the rest of my family at times seemed annoyed, perhaps even embarrassed by it. It was loud. Blow your speakers out loud. This more than likely explains why, when my dad wanted to cruise the lakefront that was only blocks away from our house, it was almost always me that he would ask. He would only have to say three words …

“Erin, Let’s cruise.”

He would put the top down, and we would cruise Lakefront Drive as he kept pressing the back button to that one song repeatedly. Miles and miles of the sun on our heads, wind in our hair, Lake Ponchartrain to our right or our left dependent on where we made our loop around, and of course … that song. When he would turn onto Jewel Street after he had had his fill, he would make the turn without pressing the brakes. I would grab the door and brace myself as we approached it. It scared me each and every time. With the steering wheel in mid-turn, he would look to me and say, “This thing turns on a dime and gives me nine cents change.”  Like I said, a true creature of habit.

Friends who knew my pops well say that he spit me right out of his mouth. My father’s personality and the decibel with which he listened to his music were one in the same - loud. And I have to agree with them; there is no denying that I am my father’s daughter.

From wildly imitating the conductor, opera singers, or gong player in Carmina Burana’s, “O Fortuna,” or knees planted on the living room floor watching “Neil Young in Berlin” on VHS performing, “Like A Hurricane” or my sisters and I dancing uncontrollably while playing our 45 of Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” on our Fischer Price record player, music has always been around me and subsequently, I have always been around music. Though I never learned an instrument besides the instrument that is my voice, I have always been an avid appreciator of the art of sorts; an appreciation that started with him.  

I have never really put the thought into words, but as long as I can remember I have what I am sure some may consider a strange way of relating songs to particular experiences and situations. Songs have serendipitously introduced themselves to me or revisited me in perfect synchronicity through a number of different mediums throughout the course of my life. Whether on the radio in a car, while grocery shopping in a supermarket, watching a film, a suggestion on one of the plethora of music social media platforms, the list goes on; whichever medium it takes, it finds me in an almost divine metaphysical way. Goosebumps run up and down my spine and cover my appendages as if I am in the presence of a spirit. It is not until that moment that I realize that I need this song, if only for a few minutes. I need this song to soothe my soul that may be tender from one thing or the other - from the mundane to the devastating, the mediocre to the extraordinary, whatever it may be, and without further ado - like a perch to a balled up piece of Bunny bread I too am hooked.

I cannot and certainly will not speak for everyone, but music, for me, has been one of the greatest healers. And I will always have my pops to thank for that. Since his passing I have learned and heard so much that I would like to share with him, but his time was forever interrupted. Nonetheless,  in most chapters I have included a song for suggested listening - the song that helped me to cope with whatever the situation may be at the time. Some directly relate to a particular experience, and some to a particular time. Some may be joyful and some somber. All become the playlist along my personal, long, winding cruise with the top down. 

This journal is a dedicated to Michael S. Buckley, my pops. Though I will never be able to cruise the Lakefront with him ever again in this realm, as he is now “free of the world,” the suggested listening for this chapter is Eldorado by Electric Light Orchestra - a song from the album that reminds me most of him, and one that I listen to most often when I do ride along the Lakefront as the sun sets on the west end of New Orleans. 

© Erin F. Buckley 2017, All Rights Reserved