“Sittin' in the mornin' sun/ I'll be sittin' when the evenin' comes/ Watching the ships roll in/ And then I watch 'em roll away again, yeah/ I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay/ Watching the tide roll away/ Oooh, I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay/ Wastin' time”
"Sitting on the Dock of the Bay" – Otis Redding
Chocolate ice cream, snickers bars, banana cream pie - comfort food. For many of us, when times get hard, we raid the ice box and find that thing brings us comfort and somewhere, deep in the recesses of our mind tells us everything is going to be ok, if just for a minute. And then there’s music, for me, comfort food for the soul.
Like the idea of comfort food, at any given moment our soul wants different things. Perhaps you take solace in your bible, your favorite passage of poetry, a flip through a well worn photo album. Maybe all of the above, maybe none of the above - each trying moment demands a different touchstone to bring us back to the here and now. And the touchstone required for each of us is as different and unique as our fingerprint.
As I said, for me it’s usually music and more often than not, it's Otis Redding’s “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.” I really couldn’t tell you how that came to be nor could I tell you why. But sure enough, in times of duress you’ll find me lightly humming or whistling that familiar refrain.
Perhaps its Redding’s smooth, jazz voice, or perhaps it’s the tranquil scene depicted – here’s a man at peace with the world, caught in his stolen moment of the sunrise. Or perhaps somewhere over the years I, like Redding, found those few glorious moments where you get to witness the awesome beauty of a sunrise, or as was more often my case a sunset, enough to settle the raging storms inside.
Article comments
1 - Jaimie Krycho
Ahhh. Just thinking about that song puts me at ease. I always felt the structure of the song itself sounded like water rolling.