My Kenny G moment . . .

Now I'm not someone who listens to music as "background," unless I'm SO familiar with it that it moves me on some automatic sub-conscious level. I CAN multi-task with music as a soundtrack, but it becomes my main emotional animator while I'm doing something else. If there is music on (for example) while driving and conversing, I often give the music the lead voice in my brain.

I'd never heard of Kenny G (I don't listen to much of that genre) but one day I was in a travel-induced stress and boarded a United Airlines flight and this sound washed over me and completely changed the moment. 'What is THAT?!' I said to myself. I liked it.

The truth is there is a wide range of good music that could have affected me at that moment. The anxiety of travel is constrictive, pulling my body tight as I worry about missed connections and things that can go wrong. Music takes me on emotional flights - good music, anyway. It also has intrusive power, in the best sense - it will butt into whatever grumph of a snitch I've worked myself into, transforming it, making me happy.

In that moment, the soaring saxophone of Kenny G was exactly right to lift me into bliss.   more »