I’m out of practice. I took off much of December, lallygagging away the days with favorite musicians old and relatively new instead of, as I tend to do, turning my ever-discerning ear toward the slew of new grooves bubbling up from my inbox. One odd thing that happens when I’m not putting my proverbial pen to proverbial paper on a regular basis: stilted wordplay. The wonky rhythms and rhymes combine to create clunky sentences and paragraphs and, ultimately, essays, while the analysis leans on the cliched.
That said, one of those “relatively new” favorites is folk-flavored singer-songwriter Hayley Reardon, who first caught my ear a few years back. Her recent single, “Meet You There,” is—as so many of her songs are—a low-key gem that lives up to repeated plays; I can say that last bit because I just did it while running errands this morning. I listened to it at least a half dozen times, with each new play better than the time before.
The song, she says on Instagram, was inspired by the “themes and essence” of the Spain-based Yoga Gallery, which put on festivals that she played in Menorca and Lleida last summer. One need not be aware of that backstory, however, to appreciate her tuneful musings about the tranquility achieved by meditation and yoga, though one need not be physically flexible to enjoy it: “And though the peace comes in flashes/There is a path through the madness/Into the light, the breath, a passage/I’ll meet you there.” Whatever stresses, fears, and worries one may feel about one’s life or the world at large, they’ll slip away while the song engulfs the soul, guaranteed. “Meet You There” is akin to a three-minute deep breath, a kitten on one’s chest or, indeed, a moment of mindful meditation.
The Old Grey Cat 