This is me a few years ago unabashedly thrilled to be standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona.  Why?  Because standing on that corner was on my “Must Do” bucket list since sometime around May 1st, 1972.  That was the day the Eagles, released their first single, “Take it Easy.” 

I thought the song was ok when it was released, but I was never an avid fan of the Eagles or Jackson Browne.  “Take it Easy” does not come close to making the cut on my top 40 favorite song list.   I mean it’s a song about a jerk with seven women on his mind.  That’s a lot of women for one guy to have on his mind.  And, to make it worse, two of those women want to stone him.  Even as a teen I assumed that women tended to have solid reasons for wanting to stone a guy.  I felt no empathy for this dude, no connection whatsoever.  So, I have never understood why this song is a kind of wormhole for me; a transcendental song with the power to instantaneously insert my past into my present.   

To this day, the song’s first guitar chord lightens my mood.  I smell summer and pool chlorine and Hawaiian Tropic tanning oil.  I feel wind coming in from open car windows and the radio volume up as loud as it can go without blowing out my mom’s car speakers.  My mind’s eye sees and hears my high school friends in the car with me and we are all singing along with this song. I feel euphoric.  I feel a deep love (like I’ve had a little too much wine, give me a hug love) and tenderness and gratitude towards every person who has ever sung this song with me since 1972.

The fact that I cannot be still when I hear “Take it Easy” has caused me to make a bit of a spectacle of myself in multiple places.  Just last month I danced my way from the avocados to the zucchini as this song played over the grocery’s sexy sound system.  This song has never failed to bring a smile to my face.  And above all else, this song makes me feel so light and I can actually feel what it’s like to not have a care in the world.  How can a song I never even liked that much yield the power to elicit instant joy?

Before you go writing in the comments that I am certifiable answer me this:   What are your wormhole songs?  You know you have them.  Evidently around 90% of people have at least one song, usually more, emotionally connecting them with some past pleasure.  These songs cause a kind of endorphin/dopamine cocktail that wash over our brains.  I read (and this is the coolest finding I think) that the part of the brain that houses musical memory is the least, or often not at all, affected by the ravages of dementia and Alzheimer’s.  The medial brain is also where your “sense of self” makes its home.  This gives us hope that ‘self’ still exists and deep inside the brains of dementia patients.  Perhaps soon, science will discover a way to aid in the communication of that self.  Music memories, specifically the records from ones’ youth, seem to be helping point the way in those discoveries. 

Anyway, thank you Jackson Browne and the Eagles for producing a good song that after fifty years can still bring me three minutes and twenty eight seconds to dance, smile, love my people and feel care free. 

What’s a boomer to do?  As the Eagles advised, “Lighten up while you still can, don’t even try to understand.  Just find a place to make your stand and take it easy.”    

For further information:

Click here to learn about The Alzheimer’s Music Project.

Click here to read the Mayo Clinic’s article on the benefits of music.

Click here to learn about the Standing on the Corner Park in Winslow.