Last night, the UR jazz ensemble performed what I think was their end of the semester concert. They prepared jazz-fused versions of famous hits from the 1930s to the 1980s. Inspired by the 25th anniversary of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” they started with Benny Goodman’s “Sing, Sing, Sing,” passed through Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, Earth Wind & Fire and ended with the music video for “Thriller.” What I most enjoyed, though, was the archive footage of Ray Charles performing, “Georgia On My Mind,” which is possibly one of the greatest songs of all time. Charles’s voice is like hot melted butter sizzling on my brain. It’s so smooth, the whole thing plays on a two-second time delay in my mind. I have to give it enough space to really shock me, which it does every time I hear it.
 Especially now as the semester winds down, I use music to sooth me in the quiet hours moments when I’m not running from one place to another getting something done. Sometimes in college, you’re so busy working on a thousand different things that when you stop, pause, breathe, you forget to just enjoy the breath and find the next thing to do instead. You can’t quite bring yourself to embrace the stillness, which is invaluable at college. Instead of making the seemingly long leap from work chaos to stillness in the space of five moments, I listen to a song that moves me.  Then I stop thinking long enough to hear the universe singing to me.
Lately, or most recently, I’ve been listening to the haunting sounds off the ”Hole in the Paper Sky” soundtrack, which doesn’t have any lyrics. The short film is something I most likely will never see (because it’s about animal experimentation and I’ve done enough assignments and research on it and seen enough horrific videos that I don’t even take Tylenol anymore unless it’s absolutely necessary) but the music possesses that gentle knowing quality that makes a movie like this sound great. I’ve also been listening to “Io” by Helen Stellar, which has to be one of the simplest songs after “Funk Soul Brother” by Fat Boy Slim, but is much more intriguing.
It’s odd to think of the things we’ll never do–as in, “I will not watch ‘Hole in the Paper Sky.’ When you’re my age, you don’t question whether you can do something.  We don’t question anything, or, more exactly, we ask, “Why not?” Sometimes this has disastrous consequences, but it’s also very freeing. The padded cell of adulthood can’t contain that question–the question is the key to evaluation, revelation, and liberation. When you’ve passed the stage of invulnerability, the question mutates into “Who’s stopping me?” (which leads often to degeneration, as in the case of animal experimentation, adultery, war and a lot of other bad and good things, because you forget to ask whether you should)
Three weeks left, and I have about fifteen papers/articles/scripts/journals to write before I’m done. But you know, the beauty this semester gave me makes the work I have left look so insignificant. I will push on and in a few days, I won’t have as much to do. It’s all a part of the college experience. You’ll get it everywhere and some of you will listen to “Georgia on my mind” with the lost reflection that you may have made a mistake coming here, but deep down in the part of you that’s really internalizing the music, some of you will know that this is exactly where you should be.Â
Photo courtesy of http://www.yoursearchadvisor.com/blog/category/sem-industry
 Hole in the Paper Sky,
Jordan
Quote of the Week:
“Â This time around, x 4
You can be anyone,
This time around,
This love of ours,
This time around, x2
You can be anyone, x4″
- “Io” - Helen Stellar
That’s all it takes to create a great song.
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