The treadmill is a lonely machine to most, but to me, it is a time traveling orbit of a space, that, accompanied with the right music streaming through my iPhone, transports me throughout the memories of my life. Maybe it is more the music that transports me than the treadmill itself, but for me, the treadmill is the only station in life that can keep my mind and body in sweet synchronic stillness that will allow me to be still and actually feel music.
Yesterday morning I ran for two hours, 15 miles, in one spot. In that short amount of time however I found myself doing the bachata with my Aunt Sumanti and Tio Tadeo underneath the rickety awning of an open air seafood restaurant / shack in the Dominican Republic, dancing in the same seven story club in Paris, New York, Madrid, Chicago and London with my best girlfriends to the sounds of techno vibes, and skipping down Las Ramblas in Barcelona with my best friend Melissita to the mixed beats of Colombian and Puerto Rican reggae-ton. My iPhone takes me through time and forms the soundtrack to my life as I run.
As my mind pondered more and more songs with each passing mile, it was as if my heart pulled out every important one I needed to remember. Practically every major moment of my life has and can be marked by a song, and, one of the first ones that I can remember learning and singing in public was Baby Beluga. Baby Beluga sticks with me because I can still recall standing in front of my First Grade class for my very first in-front-of-an-audience performance and also because since I was a swimmer, I always felt like I related to songs that talked about water. As we all know, Baby Beluga swims in a deep blue sea, he swims so wild and he swims so free.
Baby Beluga was my introduction to freedom through the medium of music, and every song that I have loved thereafter carries with it a similar message of personal freedom.
Music transcends boarders, time, and memories. In music there is much freedom. We all have these soundtracks of freedom to our lives, what’s yours?