Songs s-s-s-sung with stuttering or featuring stormy weather have a powerful appeal to me (see MyGeneration, 2 Oct 2001). Now I've identified another strange attractor in my musical-aesthetic universe: streets. Two recent examples are "Free Fallin'" by Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne (which mentions Ventura Boulevard and Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles) and "Walking in Memphis" by Marc Cohn (Beale Street).

Roads, without moving, have power to bind a land. Simply invoking an avenue can conjure upon that magic. Name the right road, and suddenly there appear images ... faces ... sounds ... ideas ... layers of history made visible ... a whole culture, encapsulated in a word.

_{(see also WalkAbout (9 Mar 2002), InvisibleWeb (8 Dec 2002), TwoTowers (29 Dec 2002), ExpandingUniverse (26 Jun 2003), TenLeagueLeyLines (23 Nov 2003), ... )}

TopicArt - TopicPoetry - TopicPersonalHistory - TopicThinking - 2003-12-29

(correlates: LyricalHook, GoodBeyondHope, TenLeagueLeyLines, ...)