Today’s Prompt: Write about the three most important songs in your life — what do they mean to you?

Vincent (Starry, Starry Night) – Don McLean. There are other songs that will always haunt me because they are attached to particular persons or events.  A love song that She said was special to her, my son singing I can’t help falling in love with You” to his new bride.  Those are a part but they did not make me, me.  I recall a little boy hearing Don McLean’s American Pie album for the first time and being somehow moved by words and themes and music that were much too sophisticated for him. In 1971 he was 8 years old. But in spite of his naiveté and innocence he was strangely attracted to and moved by it. It was and still to this day is hauntingly familiar. Like part of my older story somehow, a part of me. Something I knew before and was reminded of and recognized as true. Perhaps it was the ferment of the times that my young heart sensed and acknowledged. But there has been a sad, persistent, longing, that required some answer for as long as I have known.  In fact the whole album (because it was a vinyl album then) contains several of the most meaningful songs in my life. So pick three. All of them are a part of my soul now.
But the Van Gogh reference has followed me my whole life. I have never formally studied his work but somehow that song and his life has played on the horizons of my consciousness for decades. I have for as long as I remember asked odd questions. I wanted to know things that many in my orbit had not considered. A few years ago, during a dark time in my life, I would say that I understood why he cut off his ear. Pain creates art. But not just any pain. It is the pain of needing to understand. An existential stubbornness that demands creativity and beauty from chaos. This year on my 52nd birthday I found out that Vincent and I share the same one. It was eerie but somehow again not surprising. I do understand why he cut his ear off. And I share his need for beauty amid the chaos, poetry from the ashes.  Even now tears puddle around my eyelids listening to these songs. Be most Groovy!

Empty Chair – Why does this song effect a boy and decades later the man?

American Pie – Full album if you would like to hear a real poet.