Day Three: Songs, Lost and Loved

This blog is a story about how life's memories and coincidences can collide in incredible ways.

Years ago, I heard a song on Air1 christian radio called "Listening for Whispers" by a band called Lloyd. The song really spoke to me and has stuck with me throughout the last decade, despite the fact that I only heard it a couple times before it seemingly disappeared off the radio waves and the internet. The only remnant was one off-the-beaten-path website with the lyrics posted so that I could memorize the words to the tune I remembered so vividly in my head. I searched every so often for ten years, hoping it would turn up on YouTube or Pandora. It seemed a hopeless case until two weeks ago.

The song casually came into my mind on a September afternoon, and I decided to give the search another chance. One thing you, my dear reader, might not know about me is that I am an internet wizard. I can find anything online. Anything. Obviously, not being able to locate this song had been a low blow to my reputation.

I anxiously typed the title of the song in and pressed enter, breathlessly searching the screen for any signs of life. Upon my word, there it was! The cd for sale on Amazon! Before I knew it, I had clicked "Buy Now!" I knew it was my only shot to hearing the song after years of wishing and empty-handed dead ends.

Eventually the mail I checked every day yielded something useful, and the songs were presently loaded into iTunes. I quickly located the song and impatiently double clicked, waiting for the first notes to touch my ears.

It was just as I had remembered yet still far away, like a moment that comes back into focus or a pocket watch that is tuned and polished. The verses were muddled in my memory but as soon as the chorus kicked in, everything came back. I memorize things as I can picture them. The wonder of the night sky and quiet walks came softly, as did the reminder that we often listen for the shouts instead of the whispers. "The sun is blinding us and still we look for matches."

The obvious is out there for us to grasp, we just have to look beyond what is colloquial and banal. We HAVE to look for the hidden in order to figure out what we see, big or small. Ideas of molecules or faith. Literature or science. Nothing worth having comes easy, and what we perceive is among the most precious of things to own.