Time is the Playground

Time Is the Playground

So much has happened since I’ve had a chance to sit down and write in my blog. My daughter got married, business has been booming, and life just keeps moving along!

My daughter, Maggie, and I have long enjoyed the music of the band Carbon Leaf. There have been years when I’ve listened to their huge body of music over and over, and for whatever reason, this is one of those years.

The album they released two years ago, Time Is the Playground, didn’t really catch my attention when it first came out. I’m not sure why. But this year, with all the rapidly changing events in my life, I’ve found myself really drawn to it. It’s led me down quite a rabbit hole, doing a deep dive into both the music and the lyrics.

One of the things I’ve always loved about Carbon Leaf is how many layers there are to their lyrics. The musicality is so intricate and detailed that I find myself spending way too much time listening to the same songs, picking apart the different instruments, thinking about the words, and discovering things I hadn’t noticed before.

Their music has bolstered me through difficult times, given me a shoulder to cry on, and provided the soundtrack to some of the most important moments of my life. I could probably write an entire book about the connections I have to songs from their older albums, but I’ll try to stay focused on this one. Ironically, this particular album is all about time and nostalgia, which seems especially appropriate for where I am in life right now.

The first song on the album, Time Is the Playground, had never really caught my ear until after their concert in Dallas in September.

We saw them on a Saturday, and on Sunday I got to spend several hours with my childhood best friend, whom I hadn’t seen since we were about 12 or 14 years old. I just turned 60, so you can do the math on that one!

Listening to the song afterward brought all kinds of pictures into my head of our childhood neighborhood and the days when kids ran around wild, as we all seemed to do in the ’70s and early ’80s. Those long summer days when time seemed endless and we had no idea how quickly the years would eventually pass.

But the more I listened to the lyrics, the more wistful the song began to feel. While I was looking backward at my childhood, life was moving forward at what felt like the speed of light. My daughter was getting married. She was no longer the little girl I remembered, but a full-on adult beginning another chapter of her own life.

And here I was, turning 60.

There’s a line in the song about wanting to be worn before fading, followed by the image of being secondhand and swept away. I keep coming back to those words.

Maggie and I recently got tattoos of the Carbon Leaf motif, along with the words “The more you live the less you die,” from their song Comfort. To me, the idea of being worn before fading reflects that very same sentiment.

I don’t want to simply exist. I want to live. I want to experience things, make memories, have adventures, and wear myself out doing the things that make life worth living.

And then there’s that idea of being secondhand and swept away.

If you listen closely to the music, there’s a ticking sound, almost like the second hand of a clock. At first, I thought of the lyric as simply another reference to the passage of time. But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered whether there was another layer. Something secondhand is something that has already been used, perhaps passed along or even discarded. And eventually, time sweeps everything away.

Maybe that’s not what the songwriter intended at all. But that’s one of the things I love about music. We bring our own lives and experiences to it, and sometimes a song means something completely different to us than it did to the person who wrote it.

Turning 60 last week has given me a lot to think about.

I want to be relevant. I want to be known. I want to feel like the things I do matter.

I look ahead and realize that I probably have more years behind me than I do in front of me, and sometimes that makes me sad. I suffer terribly from being young at heart, and I would really prefer to stay youthful forever!

But I also look at everything happening in my life right now. My daughter is married. My business is growing. I’m meeting new people, learning new things, and finding opportunities I never imagined I’d have at this stage of my life.

Maybe that’s the whole point.

Maybe getting older isn’t about trying to hold on to who we used to be. Maybe it’s about continuing to find new things to love, new things to learn, and new reasons to get up in the morning.

I don’t want to spend so much time being nostalgic for the past that I forget to enjoy the present. And I certainly don’t want to stop making memories just because I’ve reached some arbitrary number on the calendar.

I want to be worn before I fade.

And this is one of the reasons I love being a music therapist. Music has an incredible way of connecting us to our memories, our emotions, and the people and experiences that have shaped our lives. A song can take us back 50 years in an instant, help us express something we can’t quite put into words, or remind us that there’s still so much life left to live. In my work at Therapy by Alice, I get to use music intentionally to help people connect, communicate, and improve their quality of life. And through massage therapy, I get to help people feel more comfortable in their bodies so they can keep doing the things they love. They are two very different approaches, but both are about helping people live better.

If you’d like to learn more about how music therapy or massage therapy might benefit you or someone you love, I’d be happy to talk with you. You can contact me at Therapy by Alice in Gatesville, Texas.

Because no matter how old we are, there’s still music to be heard, memories to be made, and life to be lived.to think about. I want to be relevant. I want to be known. I look ahead and realize I have more years behind me than in front of me and sometimes that makes me feel sad. I suffer from being young at heart and I want to be youthful forever.