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That one song
There are songs that you meet and know right away that you are bound to have a long and close relationship.
Some of these are attached to significant life events, where the song becomes the receptacle for the emotions of a moment, or the connection between the you that is and the you that was.
Some of these appear, unbidden, and just lodge in your heart for nothing more than the pureness of their being. The song becomes a divining rod, pointing to whatever true thing is alive for you right now. The song Brandenburg by Beirut is one of these songs for me.
I met this song in dance class. In the underwater period between when my ex-husband moved out and when the divorce was final, I started taking a bellydance class. Two weeks of class convinced me that my post-decree gift to myself would be to go to a bellydance retreat in Costa Rica. I put the trip on my credit card and kept going to class.
My teacher kept a playlist of eclectic music — anything that made her feel like moving. There was some traditional music in there, sure, but there was also hip hop, funk, pop, and Brandenburg.
I first heard the song in a class while we warmed up — it’s a medium/slow, swaying kind of song. It hooked right into my blood and made everything liquid in me move to its rhythm. I couldn’t not move when that song came on.