What song(s) that you hear and immediately are flooded with memories or feelings…

[VOX]

132. Mason William's "Classical Gas"....

Summer '68 -- strange days, the heady 60s were shifting into something more unbalanced... had been fooling around with various substances, in vain, to block out numerous weird and outrageous events, personal and beyond: my parents had separated; Vietnam was in full swing and leaking corrosively into everyday life; "peace and love" was giving way to "by any means necessary"; had just broken up with my first serious girlfriend; and the profound shock of MLK's and RFK's murders had carved a dark neural pathway that couldn't be shaken off.

Retreated to my grandmother's place in Palm Springs to just drift (literally, in the pool), to heal up, to let the mountains and sky and warm breezes flush out the struggling spirit.

Some routine errands had to be run, fired up my well-used '65 Lincoln, turned onto the fresh blacktop of Highway 111, the hot air currents shimmering over the open road ahead. Snapped on the radio; as if on cue, Mason William's "Classical Gas" opened with those first few delicate acoustic guitar notes. On the downbeat, the car was humming on the black asphalt ribbon, the humbling panorama of Mt. San Jacinto filling the windshield. In those moments, the sideways world was abruptly placed upright -- the light, the sky, the music -- all converged into something higher, something harmonic, something unbounded by time and space.

For a very short, sweet time, I was free, and it was perfect.