I learn what life's about...

By loving you, through the years….

This is part of the song as being the last thing I listened to before my unintentional sleep yesterday night. Finishing my working days for this week, I went back home jovially on Friday 25 February 2005. Refusing to take a look at those printers-to-be lying around in the office, I walk highly determinedly at 7 pm (definitely the earliest for this week) to the direction of the EXIT sign. I waved a cheerful goodbye with joy leaping inside to my two hardworking fellow engineers; Raghu and Sai, who were still playing with the printer. Pressing the release button, and there I was, stepping my precious feet onto the Land of Liberty.

Buses 100 and 153 have safely sent me home. Having my simple dinner in front of my laptop, I played the Kenny Rogers’ Live by Request DVD. Wow, man… I’ve chosen the right and soothing way to end my tired and stressful days. Songs by songs, lyrics by lyrics entered my head… and heart.

A bit of flashback, I had always been anomalous among my peers back in secondary school – high school days (Indonesian education system). When Backstreet Boys, Boyzone, Alanis Morisette (how to spell her name correctly by the way?), and… -who else?- were the most-talked about during break or even in the classroom, I could only just stay silently and think “Who are they?”. I had nobody (among my school mates) to discuss high and low about the music genre that I listened to; The Everly Brothers, The Brothers Four, Beach Boys, Eagles, Louis Armstrong, Cliff Richard, The Beatles, The Bee Gees, Abba, The Carpenter, and yeah… of course my favourite Kenny Rogers. Thanks to my dad who constantly bought their collection of CDs. Then my dad spotted this and before I lagged too far behind about what is sung in the Grammy or what’s on top of the stack @ Disc Tara, Aquarius or the likes… he re-activated the Cable-TV and really encouraged me to watch MTV-Asia. Only since then that I got acquainted (virtually, of course) with Mike Kaseem, Rahul Khana, Nadia Hutagalung and Sarah Sechan. Then I could talk in the same frequency with my peers. Therefore, since my second term (caturwulan 2) of first year in Santa Ursula High School, those MTV VJs took turn to greet me after schools. Then the TV would still be on ‘til late afternoon, before being switched to telenovela (Esmeralda). So I listen to “today's music” during lunch, and whenever I came out from cramming myself with books and homework in my room to the toilette. Sometimes I just stopped by in front of the TV if something interesting was blasting. So the default channel was MTV (after school – night), and only switched to other channels when somebody wanted to watch something else. So, MTV is a huge part of my Journey of Teenagehood.

But still, my favourite program in MTV was…. MTV Classic. Oh Gosh. It is the program when I could see the young Lionel Richie crooning “Hello”, Jackson Five dancing away in the clip….

Well, keeping up with what’s happening in the current music industry is one thing, but my first preference still stays unreplacable, unshaken and unchanged. Even until now, my music collection was definitely an outlier in my generation. Didn’t mean that I am the only one, though….

Oh Holy Ghost, this flashback is definitely not ‘a bit’…

OK, back to last night….

Repeatedly I played those of my favourites: Island in the Stream (sans Dolly Parton, too bad), She Believes in Me, Through the Years (the aforementioned song), Lady, Crazy, You Decorated My Life. Other songs also, of course, but not as often.

I am just amazed (for years) about how the lyricists could put the simple words together to weave a POWERFUL meaning. That’s what I like best about oldies actually. They use very simple words, what lies beneath them is DEEP, SUPERBLY DEEP.

As for Kenny Rogers’ songs (esp. those that I mentioned), they are truly the songs to be sung by a man to a woman (oops, a LADY as he sings it), and mean it wholeheartedly of course. It will be pointless if he doesn’t do it that way.

Another thing that is so sexy about his voice is about how he sings intermittently. Take a look at these:

“For the rest of my life, all I nee hee hee hee hee d is you.” (Crazy)

“You have made me what I am, a ha ha ha ha nd I’m yours.” (Lady)

“Let me hold you in my arms fo ho ho ho ho r evermore.” (Lady)

“You have come into my life a ha ha ha ha nd make me whole.” (Lady)

Just a few examples, but you won’t always find that intermittence in his recordings (CDs). But he did so in my DVD, and it was just… great!!!


Have a blessed weekend!!
Rhea