A Time Machine

What song in your life is really a time machine?

The notes and lyrics touch your ear drum and instantly transport you back to another decade, perhaps to when you first heard the song or the place where it developed a sonic connection to your life.

Do the words of that song stand the test of time?

Yesterday, America’s “A Horse With No Name” launched from the speakers of my SUV and suddenly I was driving my old Mustang on I-10 between Houston and San Antonio on a Sunday night in 1972 returning to Ft. Sam Houston from a weekend visit to New Orleans. Words break through the crackling static of a distant 70s AM radio station:

I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain.

Back to the present, I sing along for a minute then laugh out loud. What the hell do those lyrics mean? I remember my name in a desert because no one is around to hurt me?

Huh?

Seemed so cool at the time.

I wonder if some blogger thirty-four years in the future will write a post like this referring to those lyrics from back in 2005:

Whatcha gonna do with all that junk
all that junk inside your trunk?

I'm gonna get get get get you drunk
Get you love drunk off my hump.
My hump my hump my hump ....

It’s all relative I guess.