Knees Bent, Ears Perched.

This evening we watched National Treasure for the umpteenth time as a family. Because of the varied interests and tastes across the five of us, there are probably only 2 or 3 handful of movies that the entire family enjoys and both the National Treasure films make the cut.

I was doing some household chores as well as some work throughout the film. I would nothave thought that after all these many times I’ve watched the movie, that tonight while barely paying attention, I’d notice something possibly for the first time.

Perhaps it was because I was only partially paying attention that the music caught my attention more than usual. Or, perhaps because I have a musician in the house regularly playing background music and talking about music that has made me hyper-aware. During tonight’s viewing, I became far more aware than ever before, how well the score of National Treasure is integrated and emotive.

Without looking up, I could feel and know the scene shift, the moments of inspiration, history, wonder, etc. I could feel the spark of new love and the bafflement of Riley.

I’ve always enjoyed a solid, well conceived movie score.

In the days of my youth when I bought vinyl albums and tapes, I owned quite a few movie soundtracks and scores. For some films, I purchased both. I recall purchasing the Titanic Soundtrack only to realize after unwrapping the DVD that it didn’t have the powerful score included.

In the age of streaming music, this next generation won’t have to come into their purchasing power with quite the same decision making. Instead of the choice being, “Can I afford album/tape A or album/tape B because I can’t have both” their choice will be, “Can I afford platform A with x-thousand songs or platform B with x-thousand songs.”

The world keeps changing and we have to change with it. We need to bend so that we don’t break. We need to be flexible. In the words of a long-ago manager, we need to keep our knees bent and ready to jump, leap, do what needs to be done to thrive.

And while we do all of that, we can create a score for our lives. . . and for the friends with hearing differences, we can try and find the words to express the emotions that a good score elists from the listener.

276 Days to go.
#OTR50