“Fidelity” - Regina Spektor
From Begin to Hope
My wife and I are different people when it comes to music. My wife is a radio listener. When we got married she had maybe 30 CDs. When it comes to naming her favorite bands, I'd have a hard time coming up with a list. I think she would too. I can come up with her top two (They Might Be Giants and Wilco). But after that I know of a few artists she likes, but none that I could elevate into a top spot.
She likes French music in the same way that she likes French films, French TV, French food and anything to do with the French people. She is a French teacher and she collects anything she can to do with the country and the culture. It isn't so much that she loves the music but that she likes that it comes from France. That is to say I don't think she so much loves the sounds as she wants to have things that come from the culture, and to have things she can share with her classes.
Passion isn't really a word I would generally use to describe the way she feels about music. Me on the other hand am fairly obsessed. I am constantly finding new music. I spend most of my days and nights plugged into some form of music or another. Whereas I'd have a hard time elevating music my wife likes into a top five list, my problem would be not knowing which bands that I love to put above the other.
I simply experience music differently than my wife. Sometimes I wonder how in the world we ever got together as music is so vastly important to me, and for my wife – not so much.
Then a song like “Fidelity” comes along and I remember.
My wife adores this song. Positively loves it. When it plays over the stereo a change comes over her. She transforms into someone else. Her face lights up, her body begins to move.
She sings. She sings! She sings along and dances and there is nothing in this world but her and this song.
I've seen her completely drained and exhausted, suddenly become this transfixed beacon of exuberance when the songs plays. I've seen her demurely sitting in the corner at a party, not knowing what to do with herself, playing the wall flower then suddenly becoming the very life of the party singing and vamping along to Regina Spektor.
Article comments