Distracted Driving

Spotify is my primary platform for listening to the music I love.  YouTube is important too, but since Spotify goes everywhere I go, it means more to me.

Many people at the gym listen to  music while working out, especially while walking on the treadmill. And I do the same. However, if I’m completely honest (and I always strive to be completely honest), for me it’s more like I’m walking while I listen to music instead of  listening to music while I walk. Most folks in the gym like to listen to “thump thump”, high energy music to help them work out. My music, instead, is music that I enjoy listening to. Thus my tendency to walk while I listen to good music. And my tendency to seldom work up a sweat.

One of the things about Spotify that I enjoy the most is the ability to make playlists.  I have about twenty five or so playlists saved to Spotify. I listen to  those playlists while I’m on the treadmill. Today I decided to listen to one that I have not listened to for a year or longer. The playlist simply reads, “Top 15 Songs”.  Technically, there are only thirteen songs on the list, but close enough. Since it has been so long since I’ve listened to it and since I didn’t look at it before booting it up, every song was like opening a Christmas present. Every song came loaded with memories and emotions.  I not only enjoyed listening to the music, but since “the song remembers when”, the music took me to far away places and distant emotional responses.  Some of the songs took me back just a year or so when I was introduced to them, but other songs took me back over thirty years.

You would think that thirteen songs would take about forty minutes since most recorded songs last about three minutes or so, but since some of the Tori Amos songs last six minutes or longer, this playlist lasted somewhat longer.  Just like I confessed that I walk while I’m listening to music, this afternoon I did something else related to that. Instead of stopping listening when I got through walking as I normally do, I decided to keep walking until the playlist was through playing.  When the music stopped, I had been walking for exactly one hour. Well to be more exact, the playlist and my walk lasted 59:57.

One of the songs, “Yours to Hold”, by Skillet, took me back several years ago to a particular place on I-65 north of Indianapolis, Indiana. I was alone in my car at a little after midnight listening to the Skillet CD. When the music cycled to “Yours to Hold”, that thing that happens sometimes while listening to music late at night happened to me.  All of a sudden all the cogs of the universe seemed to be turning in synchronicity with the music and the beating of my heart. My soul expanded from my body into space. I was fully in control of the car and my faculties. I did not put myself or anyone else in danger, but some part of me was traveling far beyond I-65 north.  As I listened to that song this afternoon, I was not only remembering that moment and feeling some of that emotion, but thinking about something that happened later  that weekend In West Lafayette, Indiana.  I won’t tell the story now, but it was a significant event involving my son and my then two year old granddaughter on Easter Sunday morning.  That very special memory actually brought me to tears on the treadmill. “That old familiar pain” as Dan Fogelberg called it.

Many states, including where I live in Georgia and neighboring Tennessee, have passed laws against distracted driving. The laws apply particularly to any sort of hand-held cell phone use while driving, but the laws apply to more than that. Any sort of physical distraction is forbidden.  I applaud these laws and the efforts of highway patrol  to enforce them. But I can tell you that just like what happened to  the Apostle Paul, it is possible to be in the body and out of the body simultaneously. I was not distracted that night on I-65.  I never took my eyes off the road. I also applaud those people at the gym who listen to “thump thump” music and work up a sweat.  But Planet Fitness advertises, “No Judgement”. So I won’t judge you and you don’t judge me. What happens at the gym stays at the gym. But what happens on Spotify is amazing.