Link to the full original album from '76
My musical brain is very obsessive about listening. I don’t watch TV. I listen to music. Mostly music I have physical copies of. Music has always helped me “process shit”, to quote therapy lingo. How that manifests is that I end up listening to one particular album or artist or song on repeat for as long as my musical brain wants.
This has led me down many different paths, and deepened my appreciation for vastly different kinds of music. This obsessive listening is both a reassuring thing for my OCD self (the familiarity is a key need), but also challenging in that with each listen, I find different parts to take a deep dive into...thus it remains fresh as long as deemed necessary.
Mind you, I’m not consciously the one who deems anything necessary. I just punch play.
For the last week, and currently, Jon Anderson’s absolute masterpiece “Olias of Sunhillow”, an original vinyl copy I bought in ‘76, transcribed to digital by me. This is played through a 5th Gen original iPod (with the audiophile sound processor circuit) into my AM Transmitter, and out to any radio within a coupla blocks of my building.
The fact that my psyche has settled on this album at this time is quite fitting.
I am truly at a “jumping off” point in my life, much like the race of beings in this story. I have no idea what my life is going to look like in three months, or where I will be, or anything. I’m still dangling in mid-air from having the rug yanked from under me by my best friend’s death in January. I still am non-plussed. My entire focus had been on him and keeping him alive...for years.
So I’ve been obsessively RE-“decoding/absorbing” this glorious album, which has been with me for 45 years, since it was first issued.
I need Olias’ ship-building mojo and some kind of compass bearing to aim for...coz I can’t see shit right now.
