FREE Tarot Readings Enchanted World Amy Zerner and Monte Farber

Most people know Jackie Gleason as bus driver Ralph Kramden on "The Honeymooners," and others know him as the great actor he was in "The Hustler," but few know he started out as a famous trumpet player and his style was over the top "shmaltz," syrupy, sentimental arrangements of every popular song that made Nelson Riddle's lush and nuanced Sinatra arrangements sound harsh by comparison.

Thomas Edison's phonograph and Nicolai Tesla's radio have allowed us all to have a soundtrack put to our lives. Today, thanks to Alan Turing, Marcel Vogel and others you pretty much get to choose that soundtrack, a difference that is incalculable in its implications.

My early days are described above so you can imagine the effect that Rock n' Roll, Elvis, The Beatles, Rolling Stones and the other amazing musical acts of the 1950's and 1960's had on us when it was foisted on us by businessmen - managers, record executives, DJ's who had baskets in their office where band managers tossed envelopes stuffed with cash to get their records played - and we willingly bought into it, a reaction to the realization that the timeless ballads of Sinatra and Tony Bennett and all of that sweet, sweet escape music hid from us the reality that we were dying to learn.

And so we learned about dying, a subject that never came up in the love songs. We learned about loving and spirituality, too, and that means learning about dying. Sir Isaac Newton's law, for every action their is an equal but opposite reaction, holds painfully true in how far the musical pendulum has swung from the days of love ballads to what is still called "music" today by people other than me, a former professional musician. As someone who was blessed to have The Last Poets perform live in my college classroom I can say that kind of today's "music" is more brute poetry.

It is, however, the soundtrack to other people's lives and it's enchanting them as the music available to me in my time enchanted me - a scary thought. I was enchanted to think love was a supreme joy worthy of seeking and working to keep. I know there's a lot of music today that says the same thing in its way. It's the "music" that seeks to sing violent idealizations into its listeners that I find worrisome because I know how powerful this enchantment can be. I have found, after all, an Enchanted World, and my life is dedicated to keeping that song singing into me and all who also believe a better world is possible for them and for everyone.