at the very least, it became the anthem of my restlessness.
It was the mid '70s, and I was rapidly losing interest in my Establishment computer programming job in Michigan. This job had come my way via a series of mishaps, wrong turns, and vague castings about for meaning (a complete loss of my moorings in graduate school, some half-formed, half-hearted efforts at various jobs, a failed marriage, etc.).
I was vaguely resentful of my boss's Cadillac
("the man in the suit has just bought a new car,
from the profits he's made on your dreams")
-- even though I couldn't come close
to conjuring up
any grand, beckoning dreams.
My frustrations were funneled into two-mile lap swims at the Y in the mornings (that was a lotta turns!), followed by some intense programming, followed by the ripping off of my chains (tie and dress shirt) and long walks in my t-shirt over lunch break, as the swelling strains of that grand Traffic anthem played over and over in my head.
A gripping song of my unseasoned twenties, full of contextual emotional overtones.
And I still love it, in spite of / because of those associations. Maybe it's because even the first few strains of this tune still snap me to attention, swell my chest and my throat with off-center emotions, and take me back to those defiant lunchtime walks up State Street. And maybe because I can look back from a several-decades perspective, and chart the emotional distance that I have traveled from the churning crucible of my mid-twenties.
Over that time I've been blessed with a new direction, a retooling, an ever-growing relationship, a new career, and a loving family. I've worked on discovering bits and pieces of myself, and assembling them into a semblance of a whole (hat tip to WAC). And a growing recognition of the power and beauty of music, as a soundtrack, a catalyst, a Siren's beckoning call, a soother, a stirrer, a shaker, my very own Shape Shifter.
Here's to playing in Traffic, and to
letting
yourself
go.
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