In the Zone

While hanging with my brother the other day, he mentioned a memory from when we lived in New Orleans. We lived in New Orleans for the first five years of my life, so he didn’t think I’d remember the event he described. I didn’t, but said that I did have vivid memories from New Orleans. He figured riding my bike with a cast on my leg was one, and he was right. This made me think about how important music was to me and one of my earliest memories of the impact music has had on my life. I just shared this particular memory in a FaceBook note tag craze titled “15 albums that impacted my life.” However, here I will segue into songs that I connect with deeply and put me in what I call THE ZONE.

Briefly, when I was 4, the boy across the street intentionally rode his bike over my legs, breaking my right leg. This put me in some sort of shock and I stopped talking. I was pretty much a zombie for most of the day. Several hours after we returned from the hospital, I was still unresponsive. So my mom put on the soundtrack to Oliver! Almost immediately I came out of my trance and started connecting with my family. Throughout the years, I noticed there were certain songs that would put me in The Zone where I felt a special deep connection that seemed beyond words of description. I could say the lyrics mean something special, but sometimes the lyrics don’t make that much sense apart from the music. Most recently the song that puts me in The Zone is “Moment of Surrender” on U2’s new CD. Below I’ve listed a few more songs that take me into The Zone. I have written about some of these in other blog posts.

*Whole of the Moon – The Waterboys
*Harvest Moon or Old Man – Neil Young
*Go on Through- Afro Celt Sound System
*Paradise or Idaho- The BoDeans
*Northern Star- Ollabelle
*Much Farther to Go – Rosie Thomas
*All at Sea or My Yard – Jamie Cullum (or his cover of High and Dry)
*In the Sun – Joseph Arthur
*Girl in the War, Wolves, or Temptation of Adam- Josh Ritter
*North Dakota – Lyle Lovett
*Mercy Street – Peter Gabriel
*Day of Reckoning – Robbie Robertson (or his original of Broken Arrow)
*Fragile, Dead Man’s Rope, or Mad About You – Sting
*This is the Day – The The (most recently used in an M&M’s ad, what the heck?)
*Beauty of a Dream- Thomas Dolby
*Protected- Tim Finn
*All I Want is You, One, When I look at the World, or An Cat Dubh – U2

Most people can relate to that “In the Zone” feeling. Surrendering to The Zone submerges me in feeling completely comfortable with truth, consumed by grace, and intimately loved.