Where the Light is

I have a lot of music in my iTunes library. Over 5000 songs and 66 of them are John Mayer tracks. I love every one of them. My favourite album being ‘Where the Light is’. Recorded live on December 8th 2007 at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles…I can’t tell you how much I wish I’d been there. Guitarist magazine gave the album five stars, saying the disc proves that “Mayer, 30, is the complete package as a singer, songwriter and guitarist.” I agree wholeheartedly.

Why Georgia, originally from his first Album ‘Room for Squares’, is the track I play the most. This song lifts me,  and regardless of my mood before listening I am always inspired afterwards. Rolling Stone magazine said that the song “lifts into a melodic chorus you won’t soon forget”. Lifts. Isn’t that what we want music to do for us?

In the first verse Mayer sings I am tempted to keep the car in drive and leave it all behind. This lyric formed part of a conversation I had with my husband that really got me thinking. I was trying to explain to Darren why I love this song so much. To my continued dismay Darren is not a Mayer fan, a fact that I find frustrating and inexplicable as he usually has such excellent taste!  Anyway, part of my (sadly unpersuasive) argument was  that the song made me feel free, made me want to just drive and sing my lungs out. That it gave me a feeling of nostalgia for the past and hopefulness for the future all jumbled together in a goosebumpy, spine tingling, hands uppy kind of way.

Darren got it and agreed certain songs could make you feel like that.  Then he asked the most relevant of questions…’Why is it as we get older every trip becomes about the destination and not about the journey?’ We drive to work, to take the kids to school, to go to the dentist, to pick up milk, to get fuel in our tanks so we can repeat it all over again. But we rarely drive like we did when we were younger.

My son Ryan (19) and my daughter Grace (17) and their friends do this. They drive around listening to music with absolutely no purpose or fixed place to go. They soak up the thrilling freedom a car represents.  I know they don’t have the worries or responsibilities we do, so it might be easy to assume it’s the freedom from stress that allows them to ‘Joyride’, but I know that’s not it. While my kids may not have MY worries or responsibilities they do have their own and theirs are just as real to them as mine are to me. So what is it? What allows them to live in the moment and revel in their youth? I don’t know the answer but I’m gonna try to figure it out. Like John Mayer, I question sometimes whether or not I’m livin’ it right. This weekend, I’m loading up my playlist in the truck and setting off with no destination in mind…just looking to see Where the Light is.

Either way I wonder sometimes
About the outcome
Of a still verdictless life

Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?

Have a great weekend folks, and if you go on a Joyride yourselves…let me know