I seem to be ignoring my creative side lately in favor of other things.  I promised myself I would not do that so I will make an effort in the coming days to bring it back.  I believe that variety is the spice of life, no I don’t mean that in a sexual sense, but I also believe that creativity is a big part of living a fulfilling life.

I have recently taken on a project to put together a catalog of songs from my past that gave me insight into life or just gave me joy.  For some reason it struck me the other day that maybe my more frequent bouts of depression now are due to not being able to just sit back and listen to the music of my past.

One of the tragic things that I have discovered about my deafness is that I am no longer able to remember what musical instruments  or even music in general sound like! I watch someone playing the guitar and see the strings vibrate but just can’t remember what it sounds like. I can remember the cadence of songs but not the music.

I realize I can never listen to those songs now but I can still read the words and “sing” them to myself  and I do just that when I’m sure that no one can hear me. 🙂  I wail away to my own enjoyment.  I have carried  around the words of one of my favorite songs for several months now.  It is a song by Simon and Garfunkel entitled The Sounds Of Silence.  It is kind of ironic that I now can fully apprehend just what the sound of silence really is.

Anyway, I am attempting to gather many of the songs of my past and most of them are of the folk music variety.  Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger, and even Woody Guthrie.  But the list also includes some Beatles, Grateful Dead, Bruce Springsteen, and others but sorry, no Elvis or anything in that genre.   Since I went deaf in 1988 none of the singers today even register on my scale.  I have no idea what rapping is or why someone would want to play a record player backwards. Lady Ga Ga who I think is a singer is a total mystery to me as to why anyone is even interested.

I still have my record collection and am pulling it out now just to look at the covers. They bring back some pleasant memories.  I am sure I am biased but I don’t think anything today comes close to the songs of my youth during the rebellious 60s.