It feels like I’m back in grade school and it’s show-and-tell day.
Yesterday I used duct-tape to bind my breasts to demonstrate the absurdity of the new YA library book, ‘Breathe: Journeys to Healthy Binding.’
Why do libraries and public schools in California want to promote self-harm and the erasure of women?
This brings back so many wonderful memories of the ’80s. ✨❤️
What Makes a Song From Forty Years Ago Still Feel Like Home?
Watch Christopher Cross when he sings “Sailing” now. He stands under soft green lights in a blue suit and dark hat, holding that turquoise guitar almost casually. There is nothing spectacular happening on stage. No dramatic entrance, no attempt to recreate the energy of a younger man. He simply starts singing, and within a few seconds, the room seems to slow down with him.
That is probably the first thing that stands out. The song hasn't changed much, and neither has the way he treats it. His fingers move gently across the guitar, the melody rises and falls without being pushed, and his voice still has that open, almost weightless quality. The camera occasionally catches his face close enough for you to notice the years, but somehow that makes the performance better rather than weaker. You can see time, but you can also hear continuity.
“Sailing” arrived in 1980, at the beginning of a decade that would become known for bright colors, bigger sounds, and increasingly polished pop production. Yet this song seemed to come from somewhere completely different. It wasn't trying to make the listener dance or overwhelm them with emotion. It offered a simple fantasy: leaving the shore, feeling the wind, watching everything familiar become smaller in the distance.
Maybe that's why it has lasted.
The interesting thing about hearing it decades later is that the song doesn't need to pretend it belongs to the present. The clothes have changed. The technology has changed. The stage is different. The younger Christopher Cross appears on the screen behind him, almost like someone from another lifetime. But when the first notes arrive, none of those differences seem important anymore.
You suddenly remember why the song worked in the first place.
I find myself watching his hands. There is no rush in them. He doesn't seem interested in proving that he can still play. He plays as though he already knows the song has nothing left to prove either. After so many years, the performance feels less like showing off a hit and more like taking care of something that has been entrusted to him.
And perhaps that is why some old songs feel strangely personal. We don't only remember the melody. We remember where we were when we heard it, who was beside us, what our lives looked like, or simply the kind of person we were before the years changed us.
A song can become a small room inside your memory. You may not visit it for years, but when the music starts, the door is still there.
That's what “Sailing” does so well. It doesn't pull us back to the past by force. It simply creates enough quiet for the past to come looking for us.
Maybe not everything needs to become louder, faster, or newer to remain alive. Some things survive precisely because they stayed honest about what they were.
And sometimes, after forty years, a familiar melody is still enough to make the whole room breathe a little slower.
What song from your past can still make everything around you feel quieter?