Daily Prompt: Weaving the Threads

My nephew copies music. He reminds me of myself at his age, except I was using tapes I got from Tower Records, you know the kind that came in packs of 10, wrapped in some type of red plastic that was damn near impossible to remove without scissors. And he copies movies from air to air, which seems odd to say. The music he has comes from nothing, or at least from nothing tangible. It’s all about files, MP3s, downloads, and download speeds, and before you know it those files are in his possession, in his folders, in his iTunes, taking up kilobytes, and megabytes, and bandwidth, something like that. He has the latest songs from Beyonce, and from Psy, and from One Direction (even though he’ll deny it — I saw it in his iTunes). And that’s how the youngsters categorize music now, by songs, not by albums. Remember when albums were king? But we live in this era now, and my tapes are upstairs collecting dust.

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The music draws me in
Circling like a shark
As it swims in a cage
Contained by standard glass
but fighting to break free
I close my eyes and listen in
Editing in my mind
Creating duets that jive
Ella and Justin
Merchant and Michael
I pause to drop the bass
And just dance.

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I remember trips to grandma’s house in the springtime, when she was old but I was fervent, and she made a believer out of me. With her 8-track tapes on her gargantuan sized stereo, it was otherworldly to sit there and listen. And with grandpa asleep in the next room I was supposed to keep it down, but I never did. Try telling a monkey to stop hanging from that tree and throwing its feces. It was just that impossible. Because the beat moved me, it always did, and I couldn’t have it in my house, even though I had two average age parents who were supposed to groove more and worry less, but they were oppositional as always. My brother loved grandma’s house too because it gave him time to play horseshoes in the living room while I listened to my music. He tried to get me to play all the time, but I declined, always wanting to grab the large headphones and go to town. And grandma says I’m going to blast out my eardrums, but she doesn’t stop me.

No, she never stops me.

Sam