If Music Be the Food of Wellness, Play On

"Without music life would be a mistake." Nietzsche

If you've been missing an issue of 'Well' it's not because of an email malfunction, but because I got immersed in another project. Music of all forms has been a very important part of my life and my wellness. As a lead up to my 70th birthday at Christmas I decided to create 'My L.I.S.T.' (Life In Song Titles). The goal was to select about 100 songs that have been part of the soundtrack of my life.

I made a few rules; I would limit my selections to popular songs, which meant:

1. No instrumentals
2. No jazz
3. No opera
4. No songs from musicals (unless they became a hit)
5. No comic songs

I also decided that as a general rule there would only be one song per artist, although there could be more than one song composed by the same artist and interpreted by others. I wrote an essay about every song and the impact it had on me. Once I had made my selections and winnowed them down close to 100 (there's 113) I put them in chronological order and, to my surprise, found that I had a pretty even spread over nearly 6 decades, from the 50s to the present. This meant that the essays, which accompany the songs, provide many insights into the arc of my own life story.

It has been a fascinating and time-consuming project, the final book, which will be distributed at my party, contains 7 CDs and 180 pages of essays. Ten million mature adults could list their top 100 songs and I'd be positive that no two lists would be the same. Your top 100 is as unique as your fingerprint.

I'd be happy to see the Top 100 of other 'Well' readers, which you might work on over the Christmas holidays. One other thought that I held on to during my selections was that I'd pick songs for their impact on me, regardless of their objective quality or the opinions of others.

So herewith My L.I.S.T. and a couple of the essays

My L.I.S.T. »	The Stones »	Bob Dylan »