mountains | Author Sean T. Smith

I’ve heard that smell is the sense most tied to memory. I don’t doubt that, but for me, a certain melody can bring the past flooding back in a way that nothing else can. Music has been an integral part of my life since Junior High, so at my age, that’s a prettty long soundtrack.

The perfect song at the right moment leaves an indellible imprint on me. If I’m in a pensive mood and hear that song again, there is a kind of echo in my soul and I can feel the sun on my face, taste the wine, or catch a whisper of perfume.

When I hear Jimmy Buffet, sometimes I’m back in college on a leaky boat with my old friends, that lazy warmth of sunshine, salt water, and laughter shining strong. Back when I knew I could do anything and the world was my oyster and real problems were things other people had. My biggest concern then was whether we would catch fish or get caught by the Marine Patrol. (We were always in violation of something.)

Rock You Like A Hurricane takes me back to high school, getting pumped up before a big basketball game, and I can smell the gym floor and feel the adrenaline and sweat and anticipation. Basketball was a huge part of my life, and like so many things, it’s faded from my consciousness, something I once did that I no longer do. I miss it sometimes, especially when I hear that song.

The Song Remembers When brings me out west to Jackson Hole and Yellowstone when the air was crisp and the light was golden and tasted like hope. We heard that song on the radio as we drove over the Great Divide, the sun slipping below snow-tipped peaks around us and the sky painted a glory of pink and orange, and I recall that moment, knowing how rare and precisous it was, holding on to it for as long as I could. She and the moment slipped away like old loves always do.

My wife recently turned me on to Van Morrison, songs like Into the Mystic, and I can feel those songs wraping around my soul as we make new memories that one day we will look back on with deep fondness. I am in a season of gratitude and love, keenly aware of the often fleeting nature of peace and passion. It’s priceless, a sensation to be savoured, an emotion to be relished in the moment.

Because the memory is only an echo.

“Son, it’s not too late. You can still go back to college…Well tonight, you’re just gonna have to settle for rock and roll.” Bruce Springsteen, from the introduction to “Growing Up”

An artist’s life is hard, joyous, depressing, daunting, rewarding, poverty stricken, and often all of these things at once. We’ve heard it doesn’t have to be that way from self-help gurus and feel-good books. sometimes, when things get close and mean, when the sacrifices we have made hurt the most, we wonder whether it was all worthwhile. But I believe true art is born from this struggle.

Now, I don’t think the only way to be a great painter is to cut your ear off, that melody must arrive from pain, that literature only flows from broken, bearded, drunken angst. There are better ways that aren’t cliches. But it’s hard work. There is no way around that part. There will be sacrifice and tears, and hopefully we learn from the experience and get better at what we do. Maybe that’s part of the refining process, the purification of our creative souls.

It’s hard. But we choose to pursue the life of the artist, and we can only hope that what we love chooses us. The legendary songwriter Harlan Howard, whom I had the privilege of knowing, told a writer who was whining about the music business “Well, nobody asked you to move to Nashville.” Those words sting me when I realize I’m slipping into complaint mode. That’s right, Harlan. Nobody asked me to become a writer. I may feel called to do it, but in the end, it’s my choice, and the time, loves, and brain cells I’ve squandered along the way are a consequence.

I do not understand the writer who does not read, the painter who does not see, the musician who will not listen, or the artist who does not live. There is glory in it, earned joy which is the process and the product, but not the recognition or fame. We writer types often equate the glory with adulation and miss out on the glory of life. Like a hiker so fixated upon reaching the summit, he walks through the golden October woods, missing the grandeur of the low clouds blanketing the slopes and ridges, ignores the green smell of hope and mountain, and the trail itself, undulating, rocky, muddy, and wonderful. If we are focused on the peak, we miss the path. I’ve climbed many mountains, but the best views are usually from the ridges and valleys. The peak is often shrouded in the mist, and it’s really just another rock.