My 3 best friends

Photo by: Tim Bindner Photography

My three dearest friends are not humans but have provided me as much if not more than any human can.  These three consist of music, hiking, and photography.  As you have found you the way to my site or are receiving emails on my blog posts, you already know how much I take pure joy in hiking as well as the photography that goes hand in hand with it.  Music however or I have been an older and much more intimate friend.

A friend recently posted on his blog about his love of music which got me thinking about how so integral music has become to my existence I felt it warranted a post of its own.  By the way here is that post.

My earliest memories as a child involved music.  As a child, I had severe asthma and bad allergies.  Asthma is when part of the lung is destroyed and thus resulting in permanent loss of part of my lung.  That with bouts of allergies, I was sentenced to many long days and nights in my room in the air conditioning.  I also spent way too many nights in the hospital just trying to breathe.  During spring, summer and fall days when conditions were right and I struggled to get any amount of life-sustaining oxygen, I was given medicine and sent to my room to relax.  While friends spent time outdoors playing and having fun, I was confined to my room.  I was given a stereo that had an 8-track, cassette, record player and radio all built-in, with two tiny speakers.  I was given a few 8-tracks and records that started me on my greatest love and allowed me the freedom I imagine people get from reading books.  I do not read, as I will cover in another blog.

My first recollection of music I had was an 8-track from Queen called The Game, Kiss Alive record, The Police – Zenyatta Mondatta, and the record Meet the Beatles.  I remember wearing those sets out, listening to them over and over.  Thought I never picked up the skills on an instrument, due to ability, or patience to learn, I was able to repeat every melodic note, lyric and tone of every song I owned.  My collection continued to grow and grow over the years.  As the format moved from 8-track, records, to cassettes, CD’s, MP3’s, MP4’s and now streaming, I have amassed a giant collection of memories.  Currently residing at over 21,000 songs.

Being stuck in a room, music allowed me an escape that prevented me from going crazy as I feel many prisoners do while in incarceration but it also provided me one more important aspect.  Music was my counselor.  Songs provided me with ways to deal with my fears, emotions, and anxieties while growing up.  Through the stories I heard in songs, I learned about the world.  Music was my drug.  It took me to the highest highs and the lowest lows.  If I was upset or depressed music could bring me back from those dark places.  If I were stressed songs could ground me and calm me down.  Songs have always provided me the solace I need in my life.  It still does today.  Like memories, certain songs take me back to particular moments in my life that are part of the fabric of my being.  I have attached songs to major memories or impacts in my life.  Things like skating parties as a child, school dances, long car rides with my buddies in high school, death of my father, grandmother or others in my life are all tied to certain songs.  I can play any of these songs at any time, and the memories flood back and take me both in thought and emotion to that particular indelible memory that so greatly made me who I am.

People who know me often question my musical tastes.  Like emotions, I cannot focus on one group, singer or even genre.  I am not always happy, nor always sad, nor always anxious, thus I cannot limit myself to a type of music.  My catalog and playlists sway from Prince to Johnny Cash.  From Elvis to Harry Connick Jr.  From N.W.A. to James Horner.  From Jimi Hendrix to James Taylor.  I have a song for every emotion and a moment for every song.  I lose myself in music, much like hiking and photography.

Music will never be gratuitous to me, it will be the drug that is so intoxicatingly addictive to my being.

Until next time,

Tim