The Shortest Song

Why are the best songs always the shortest? I know some are in fact the longest - Pink Floyd comes to mind. So often, though, I feel that I have only just begun to understand the rhythm, that I have only just begun to understand the words, and then suddenly it's all over. So I go back to the beginning of the track hoping to find some unforeseen error within my iPod, some glitch unknown to me that will rectify itself so long as I turn it off, throw it against the wall, yell at it, stomp away, shout at it with suitable annoyance and an indignant attitude. When I return to the vessel that holds all of my emotive musical memories I find, yet again, that the best song is always the shortest.

Makes me think of time: all the time I have lost; all the time I have gained and not respected; all the time I have wasted; all the time I have not understood; all of the time within which things have happened, the nature of which I barely come to recognise; and all of the time within which things have seemingly not happened, the nature of which I often understand all too well.

Time itself is a mystery to me. It appears to carry my life within its palm. It appears that I am my own time's breath. It appears that within it I exist, without it I am timeless and, therefore, outside of it I am conscious of all that is within and without.

And so, looking to reignite the relationship, I again press play. The song begins another time from the beginning and I am witness, within my own mind, to the same tune, this time with time passed. I do not hear it in the same way that I did before because too much has changed. I have a preconception, a primary belief, about the lyrics, the melody and the beat. I have a timeline with this song, and yet I wish for it to to play out anew. I want it to be longer. I want it to give me more than it already has, to reveal more to me that it did the first time.

I am a hungry beast for time and yet I still show little appreciation for its Majesty because I am forever  wanting more, forever searching for that perfect moment in time, instead of learning how to love her just the way she is.