Watch out
you ignorant jerk! I belted at a nighttime jogger clad in an entirely black running outfit, as I narrowly missed splitting his legs and torso in two with my car last week.
A surge of anger pulsated through my brain stem as I found myself thinking how easily I could have killed the unsuspecting runner. True, my windshield was frosted over to the point of being a hazard. However, I like to think that the defrost feature would have taken care of this before the police and paramedics arrived.
Tim Seely's Funeral Music was reverberating off the walls of my car as I pulled into my parking spot. A blithe-sounding song about death, it begins with a jaunty hooting that upon first listen wouldn't seem a precursor to a song with lyrics like It's that look/ In your eyes/ Picturing me dead while I'm sleeping.
Smooth transitions, bright melodic melodies and interesting jazz-infused effects alongside scraping guitar and banjo make the song irrevocably enjoyable ' unless of course you don't like the dash of bereavement that evens out the potentially suffocating happiness of the instrumentation.
Whether you like it, this makes the song tolerable. Nobody likes the girl in class with the eternally petrified smile plastered on her face who laughs at anything and everything anybody says.
Nevertheless, Seely's song is indeed about a funeral. Perhaps not the traditional open casket, pungent flowers, eulogy, choral hymns and mourning that provokes tears and hairs to stand on end, but a funeral nonetheless.
This funeral is a celebration of life with boisterous music like the ones found in the Big Easy. And after last week, with my own mortality shown to me through the shocked eyes of another, I decided this is how I want to go:
A street jazz procession boasting smooth, mournful dirges transitioning into a climactic ending to both memorial service and life, with an ecstatic frenzy of my favorite music: Dylan, Dave, Davis, Stones, blues, jazz and hard-paced rock and roll, all the while family, friends and strangers dance in the street, hopefully to Martha and the Vandellas.
Life is what you make it. It may be a beautifully sung duet, a tormented opera, a trivial ditty, an epic anthem, a cacophonous racket or an illusively simple rock song with a rambunctious chorus. However it defines you, end it on a high note. 17
Archives
Collin Minnis
Music to die for
