“Baby, it’s the crazy I like”

One of my go to songs in my current Spotify playlist is the Wombats’ “Turn.” I especially like the line, “I like the way your brain works.”

(chorus)

I like the way your brain works, I like the way you try

To run with the wolf pack when your legs are tired

I like the way you turn me inside and out

I like the way you turn

I like the way your brain works

I like the way your brain works

Music gives me energy because it conjures up connections and memories to people and events in my life.  I’ll hear a song from the past or one currently playing on the radio and place it in the playlist of my life like a photograph in an album.  Just the other day, Tom Petty’s “Don’t Come Around Here No More” played on the radio and memories of my college running route popped into my head; the curves of the pine tree lined trail flashed vividly in my mind.

Rarely do songs make me feel melancholy. Instead emotions like, sentimental, rooted, connected, energized, best categorize my connection to music.

When I listen to “Turn” by the Wombats, specific images don’t rush into my consciousness, but rather I recall  the people in my life who “I’ve loved the way their brains work.” These friends have taught me to see the world as lines of poetry.  I’m thinking of the jazz drummer I worked with at my first job, shelving book at our local library. We would talk for hours about the meaning of life and jazz and about how he was so misunderstood. I think about my friend, Shannon, so damn bright and analytical but broken and lost.  Her brain was raw and vulnerable and funny as hell. Then there was my college friend, Joseph. He captivated me with his profound understanding of human nature. We would listen to Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon and analyze the tragedies of love and war.  

The thread that connects all three of these beautiful minds is their mental instability which runs like a wild river through their veins. Despite their inner demons, “I like how they turn me inside out” with their magnetic pull. As I age, fewer and fewer people are able to capture my imagination with the same profoundness, and I thank the Wombats for reminding me that “Baby, it’s the crazy I like.”