Harvest No Wild Horse

My first cd ever was Neil Young. Harvest. He’s playing downstairs, his harmonica’s howl drifting up to meet my ears in my lofted office nook. He has just given the stage to Ray LaMontagne, who is singing me one of my absolute, all-time, can’t-get-enough-of-it songs, All The Wild Horses. Between the two songs, I see my past and my future.

Neil Young- my first musical technological adventure. 1980s babies have gone from exposure to the antique record and record player, to the ordinary tape and cassette player or walkman, to the reasonable advancement of the cd and cd player or discman, to the new age triumph of the ipod and the era of the ieverything (and all the forgotten gadgets in between). We now do not have to touch a thing. With the exception of the enter key, we have no visible proof of purchase! Adaptable are we, 1980s babies! Watch out world, we are soon to be the future and I have a feeling we are the heroes everyone is looking for in the world.

Neil Young takes me to my past days as a young girl sitting in the backseat of my parents’ car as we drove from Moultrie, Georgia to Brookhaven, Mississippi. M.i.crooked letter.crooked letter.i.crooked letter.crooked letter.i.hump back.hump back.i. That is another story, the fantastic and super-cool spelling of the state of the magnolia. A story for another snowy day, but not this one. I sat in the back listening to Neil and at that time traveling to another state was still a pretty big adventure. Little did I know that the word journey would be enough to send my 30 year old self into pure delight. I leap in my head as I repeat the words journey or travel or adventure. I want to go everywhere and see everything. I feel more childlike now than I did then. I was pushing my brain then to understand this man singing and his voice of melancholy. Now, I understand it a little more because I have had a few of the experiences required of a person to relate to a voice like that. Now, I listen, try and relate a bit, and move on, quickly, to my own chosen thought, and that is more in line with Ray LaMontagne.

All The Wild Horses. I hope it is a song of my life in full. I hope when I hear this song. It is a song of the future in my vision. I see a completely free, open space, like that of a field shimmering with golden sunlight and I am soaring through the air, arms outstretched, hair blowing in the breeze I create with my motion; sheer, jagged layers of white fabric rustling from my body and arms like a flag flying freely from an idea of absolute independence from any constraint. Liberation, truly, from any reign of man or society; not able to be caught or contained; like a wild horse, powerful, free, beautifully created to be such. To catch this horse, or even house the idea of catching it, is criminal in the court of natural law. It is beyond any other’s ability to dominate, because it is truth, it is pure- it is wild. I am, in my mind’s eye, on the back of this free creature, riding wildly into unknown territory, bathed in the light of a golden Godly sun, spirit soaring. A true triumph of the soul within my body. It has surpassed, finally, any boundary of body, any expectation of society, and any rule or ordinance of unneeded and unwelcome ideas of another. This space isn’t just future, it isn’t present, or past. This space in my head is soul. I wish to look back at my life with this vision and forward to the beyond with this vision. If I can maintain this vision, if I can hear this song and feel the swelling of tears coming from the spring of all that is my life behind and my life before me, I will be proud and happy and I will love not only this horse I ride, that keeps me, but I will love myself for mounting it.

Harvest- To gather. To take or kill for food, sport, or population control. To extract from a culture or a living or recently deceased body, especially for transplantation.

Wild Horse- Symbolizes an Unbroken Spirit.