Serenata

Some pieces of musics touch springs in us that no words reach.

One passage of Tchaikovsky sends a shiver up my spine--it connects me to myself at 5, listening to the radio with my father in California, when the world was younger and less full.

And as long as I can remember, Serenata by Leroy Anderson has been a sad piece. It is a merry work--a gallop and a sparkling dance--so why should I find it sad?

It sings of a path irrevocably passed by; a part of life many share, but not I. I took the Apollonian road rather than the Dionysian, and things like dance are utterly opaque to me. Pep rallies leave me cold. (And how can one socialize in a crowd with the band so loud you can't converse? Some can, and love it. Not I. Something's missing.)

I've always felt this way about Serenata, so this isn't the nostalgic regret of a midlife crisis. Unless, of course, my sister is right. She says I was born old and have been growing younger.