Where do you start when you hear everything at once?
In theory, at least, the whole of Australia could be read as a musical score. There was hardly a rock or creek in the country that could not or had not been sung.
Most of us can remember that, as young children, the car was a place that could lull us to sleep. Some of us never lose that innate ability to be calmed by aimless motion. The car does the pacing for us. Riding in a cab, we cede control to the driver, rarely choosing the route. Nothing we can do will make it get there faster.
These songs don’t have to mention taxis, or even driving. Indeed, I’m not talking about the songs, lists of which we sometimes find ourselves brainstorming after a long night of work, that explicitly celebrate (or criticize) the art of taxicab driving in great narrative detail. Rather, a song’s “in” might be, for example, its crystallized evocation of a particular city’s urban ethos. Suspending belief in past and future, we don’t need to remember names. Crossing the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan in November 2001, the Twin Towers had never existed. (I certainly mean no disrespect — Jerome, to be sure, had never left.) I never had to ask “Who is Jill Scott?” I just knew.
There are other songs, of course, that give shout-outs to these moments. They might portray the environment that nurtures the yellow bubble, or perhaps throw down a line about a taxi ride. Sometimes they do both:
These moments sneak up on us. We can’t make them happen, even when certain life events compel us to try to bring them about. Or at least write songs about the attempt:
Any others?
Tangents for the Chasing
