It is summer, glorious now in the brilliant clear days that seem so uncharacteristic of my youthful summers, or even those recent ones, but of the rare days in Vermont sometime after the mud and before the bugs. Surely these are rare days.

There could not have been so many days that seem to inhabit my memories of summer, but somewhere in the mid-1970s I can think of nothing but nerf balls and chlorine and Seals and Crofts, Gordon Lightfoot, more. The radio, not what we could hear at home, but what the lifeguards put on at the pool, floods my thoughts now.

And I am transported immediately back to floating in the cool water when I hear the one-two-three-four”hello it’s me” coming from my own car stereo, realizing that I put it there, on that album I had in the glove box.

It hit me then: Todd Rundgren is a genius. He transports me not so much to a swimming pool in my head as to a now-too-rare feeling, that teenage feeling of hearing a song and thinking, “Yes, yes, that’s exactly what it’s like,” and then thinking how marvelous it all is that a song could so accurately capture that feeling, that experience that means something entirely different to the next person–or even to me now, me then–and is therefore universal, and perfect, and worthy of playing over and over, at least for a while, until the feeling fades and other things move in.. until later when the song plays again and is all the stronger then for the repetition, and the memory of that, too.

I used to think a lot about music. I used to analyze what was going on, know all about the bands and the writers. And I was indeed curious enough then to go poking around Todd’s intriguing website. Maybe my zeal in this has faded over the years. Or maybe I just don’t care. But it still fascinates me that we can create, we can change lives, frame them, make them something more beautiful, and lasting, just by stepping out, by letting ourselves do it.

Advertisement