Thursday, October 26, 2006

Inspired by the new, highly emotionally manipulative, Keith Urban Song...

I'm a sucker for the crescendo, and this is probably why I could never be considered a connoisseur of great music. I'm not joking here. The crescendo may be the greatest thing ever in the history of sound.

The thing about the crescendo is that if you know it's coming, and you've experienced your fair share of crescendos in a lifetime, you can easily tell yourself, "No, not this time. I will not be manipulated by a musical device." But then it comes, and especially if it's accompanied by all drumsticks and pedals banging in fast unison, you start waving your towel, raising your hands, and maybe break out into a little jig. You can't run from it.

Well, you may can, but I can't.

Everyone's trying to figure out what someone else is thinking and we develop our theories about what is going on in the head of so-and-so. Some of us want the steady rhythm of a life lived as expected. Some are content with the beauty of quietness while others have to experience life at full blast.

We provide the notes, but rarely do we choose the musical arrangement. Most often we are not the people playing the song. The song generally plays us. When we recognize this we are free to hear the crescendo over the horizon, look over at the drummer banging away in quick, steady unison, and start waving the towels and raising the hands.

And we then realize the crescendo is taking us to the place we always dreamed existed, but often doubted. We are welcomed in by those who sang with us at earlier times and in earlier choirs, but who experienced the crescendo much earlier than we had hoped.

Yep, I'm a sucker for the crescendo.

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