A time to... be stopped in my tracks

Pic: Jonas Mohamadi, from Pexels 

I didn’t think that by simply standing in a queue and half-heartedly listening to the piped music over the shop sound system, I could so quickly and so directly be hit in the feels but we’re living in extraordinary times, so why not, I guess?

To everything there is a season, sang Jim McGuinn of The Byrds as I stared into space, holding a packet of biscuits and a box of tinfoil.

Turn! Turn! Turn!

And a time to every purpose, under heaven.

I blinked. I couldn’t bear to think about the line that was coming up.

A time to be born, a time to die.

I swallowed, directing my gaze over the heads of the young men working at the counter.

Photo by Mehrad Vosoughi from Pexels

I’ve always loved that song. But, in recent years, I’d become convinced that I’ve become immune to the effects of good music.

Turn! Turn! Turn! was one of those songs that was played on the radio when I was a child. Discovering that the melody had its roots in the 1960s folk movement, and that its lyrics had a provenance that stretched back much, much further, left a profound impression on me: I liked the timelessness of the message, that words written hundreds of years ago could resonate with a 20th century teenager.

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that the power of songs to move me, particularly songs that I loved as a teenager, has waned.

I can’t be sure where the fault lies. Is it me and my worn-out heart that is too crude an instrument to tune in to the enchanting frequencies that once engaged my emotions?

Or is it that the songs themselves have lost their power? That after being played for the millionth or so time, a note or chord begins to lose the emotional punch it once carried?

But yesterday, just when I thought I would never again be overcome by something as harmless as a 50-year-old folk-rock song, Jim McGuinn’s jangly guitar playing beneath vocal harmonies somehow found its way into my throat and crept up the neural network to the lacrimal glands over my eyes. 

For me, the song represents an era when the future held great hope, when there was a feeling of comfort to be drawn from coming to terms with the cyclical nature of life. The hopes and dreams of the 1960s generation had seemed so noble and worthy when I first started hearing the song on daytime radio so many years ago.

But as we shut ourselves off from the outside world for these few… weeks? months?? ... what does the future hold for us now? Who knows what the social or psychological landscape will look like after the coronavirus has finally been routed… that’s if it is defeated, which isn’t a given.

After eight weeks of minding myself with delicious food, the occasional G&T and good books, the little bubble of optimistic naivete that was my comfort zone had been breached. All of my supports – the texts, the phone calls, the energetic workouts conducted in front of a laptop screen – looked just a tiny bit more shopworn and frail than just a few seconds earlier.

Well, the teenager who first fell in love with that song may have had a lot more hope in her heart... but this old broad has a broad back. There in the aisles of the local Centra, I was able to push my shoulders back, inhale a deep, cool draught of air, and – after a moment – step forward towards the till.

Photo by Tomasz Filipek from Pexels 

Did I feel a little silly? Did I feel a little self-indulgent when the young people who were serving me are putting their own health and wellbeing on the line by simply turning up for work? Yes, I did. But also, I felt relief that I can still be struck by the beauty of an old song, and that somewhere deep inside, there still beats the heart of a young girl with hopes and dreams.

So if, on your next visit to Centra, you see a fortysomething lady swaying gently as she stands in the queue, just leave her be for a second or two. After all, there’s a time to every purpose under heaven. And hopefully before too long, we will experience the delight once more of a time to laugh.