Piers Anthony on Songs

Songs

Songs constantly run through my head. Some are popular ones I hear on the radio; many are folk songs I know from way back. Some are just incidental ones from anywhere. Each has its spot emotional history. For example “Cool Water” wherein two men trek through the desert, burning with thirst, dreaming of an oasis with plenty of water. “All day we faced the barren waste without the taste of water—cool, clear, water.” It's a lovely song. My mother wasn't much for the radio, but one day she turned it on, and they played that song. “I just somehow knew they'd play that one,” she said. When I mentioned it to a schoolmate, he said his favorite was the one on the other side of the record (in those days all we had was 78 RPM records that played about three minutes on a side), “Tumbling Tumbleweeds.” That one's lovely too, about drifting along with the tumbling weeds, cares fading away. Westerns are not my favorite, but these are wonderful melodic songs. Another is “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” wherein an erring cowboy sees the riders in the sky, their horses' feet flashing fire, and one paused to warn him that if he doesn't change his ways he will wind up riding with them forever. What a message! But there are peripheral; other tunes dominate my skull. More on those another day.