Singin' sweet songs

So where do you listen to music? In the living room? In bed, on Sunday evening? Is it in the car, as you ease into the passing lane on Route 405? Or do you perhaps wear earbuds, as you walk to work?

For us, it seems to be a little bit of everywhere - and so it occurs to me that one could more or less draft an account of our days by describing the music that we heard, and the places in which we heard it. That tinny percussive pop, coming from nearby headphones? That was one of the members of the Saint Timothy's girls' golf team, disembarking from their team van at Fox Hollow the other day, as Cleo and I tried some putting on the practice green. The smooth, almost smarmily self-confident lines of harmony? A Music Together CD that Cleo and I found near the bottom of the glove compartment, as we drove from Oregon Ridge back toward the city. Bob Marley, singing 'Three Little Birds'? That was at a Starbucks, where Cleo and I were playing a drawn version of I Spy: she renders something in the café, and I try to guess what it is - and then we swap roles.

Inevitably, though place folds into place. The song that you hear one moment sticks with you, until its displaced - and thus temporarily colors your subsequent surroundings. Which is what happened when we got home and Cleo, delightfully filthy from hours on the playground, climbed into a warm bath. I could hear her crafting her usual mermaid narratives (her tiny Ariel doll turns out to be a very fertile prop) as I read downstairs. And then, suddenly and clearly, she sang, 'Every little thing. Gonna be all right." I picked my head up, and responded: 'Don't worry. About a thing." And suddenly we were both at one and nowhere: suspended once again in a call-and-response that had begun in a Starbucks but had now assumed a whole new form. But no worries: as she said, every little thing was all right.

Where does one listen to music? We may have favorite places, but those places seem to be more like entry points, from which ripples begin to emanate.