This is Now…

If you’ve been keeping up with things you’ll recall I mentioned the This Is Now project being coordinated by Violette from We Are Social and the problem I was having in trying to select a track that defined Now to me.  Well, after many sleepless nights I eventually settled on something,  although I do have to admit that if it weren’t for Violette’s gentle prodding I’d still be rummaging through the playlist in my head of every song I can remember, which seems to have increased ten-fold since I discovered blip.fm.

Anyway, I settled on just one track although I have now decided to create a playlist on last.fm which I will continually add tracks to, I started tagging them too until I discovered that someone had tagged about 20 songs by the Monkees as This is Now…I’ll own up to Patrick Bruel but the Monkees?! No thank you sir!

My blurb is over there on the This Is Now website but I’ve posted it here for all you people who are just too lazy to click on links and I’ve even gone so far as it include the song for you to have a listen to. I know… I spoil you all ;)

Now and Then

When asked to name a track that defined Now I did what most people would do, I started to think of tracks that meant something to me, in some shape or form.  That was my biggest mistake because I then spent every waking moment considering literally thousands of songs but I couldn’t pick one and say it defined Now.  But then again, what is Now?

Now is a moment in time that is no sooner identified before it turns into Then.  This is when I realised that no matter what song I thought of, it would never really define Now or at least not the Now of this moment; what it would define is the Now of Then.  I knew Now could not be defined by Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road, probably the first song that I heard where the lyrics spoke to me but  that was the Now of 1984 which is where I return to whenever I hear it.

I also realised that Mano Negra’s Roget Cageot was not the track to define Now although it was certainly the Now of 1990 when I was backpacking through Europe, just the first few notes and I’m teleported back to Paris where I partied long and hard with Parisians who forgave me for butchering their language and didn’t mind speaking English, contrary to what everyone told me to expect.

As I considered and discarded song after song I thought I’d have to give up trying.  Yes, I could think of hundreds of songs that took me back to a time when they were the epitome of Now but none of them could really define Now at this moment in time.  Suddenly, from out of nowhere a song started in my head that not only transported me back, to 2002 to be exact, but it also seemed to scream, This is NOW! in my ear.  The song was If I had it all by The Dave Matthews Band.  Have a listen to it 

It perfectly defines Now for me.  It is at once the Now of yesterday, the Now of tomorrow and more importantly the Now of the moment.  This song is no ordinary love song, sure it has the makings of your  typical  boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love and boy and girl live happily ever after love song but there’s something more, something special, especially when you hit the chorus and Dave sings,

And if I were a king, If I had everything

If I had you and I could give you your dreams

If I were giant-sized, on top of it all

Tell me what in the world would I go on for

If I had it all

How would we cope if we had it all? If the one we loved reciprocated. If we could do everything we desired for ourselves and for others. If we really could make dreams come true. Would life be any better if we didn’t have to work at it? I don’t think so and I don’t think Dave does either.  This song reminds me never to stand still, it reminds me not to become Then; it reminds me not only to think of tomorrow but, like Now, think of the moment.

This is Now, live for it!