the 6th it was

This late evening, continuing the chain of restlessness, I decided to put off my usual early sleeping habit and do something a little different.  You will indulge me by reading that I had half a piece of large chocolate, which I only mention because its sugar rush is probably one of the factors which is keeping me up.  Or not.  That, and I brewed a small pot of tea which is a lighter (weaker) version of the quality stuff that is usually drank, only because the intricacies of tea culture are not exactly needed or desired in the deepening hours of the night.

With that digression, I move onto what prompted me to write another post coming seconds after the previous one. While writing the earlier post, I had put on some music in the background as is often the case.  Now, I will have to say that music has never been something of any importance to me- I hardly live and breathe music, that is to say. But I do have a keen appreciation of it.  Sometimes, or more often most of the time, though, it is more background music.  This evening, though, my ears perked up when I heard something that was so recognizable to me.  I hummed along for the most part, thinking to myself that here was another one of the predictable pieces that I often listen to.  Now, you must understand that for the most part I only listen to a few things over and over again (case in point is Bruckner's 7th).  When I realized what it was (Beethoven's 6th, which I have not played or listened to for over twenty plus years), I was quite shocked because I remembered where it was that I had heard it so many times.  In the place where I grew up, we did not have any classical music or much music in general (the majority of it being pop)- a Time Life edition of Beethoven's 6th was the only record we had, and I remember that I used to listen to it many many times with the headphones on.  I also recall that I wondered where were the other symphonies (I did have a tape of the 9th in high school, though, but that was part of a quite forgettable class).  It is easy to speculate on what this work meant/means to me, but that kind of monologue is best saved for another day, another time.

What I do know is the joy that listening to this brought me back to someplace far away, long before I knew who I was, before I even began to have the right kind of dreams.