Pete and I went to see Ray the other day, and wow - that was a really powerful movie. Unsurprisingly, it made me want to go digging through SoulSeek for Ray Charles tunes, because there have been so many excellent ones, and there were an awful lot of times in the movie where the music was just carrying me away. Problem is, Ray was so prolific for so long that if you don't know exactly what you're looking for, you really don't know what the hell you're going to get - downright raunchy R&B, gospel, soulful blues, orchestral Lawrence Welk-ish stuff... any random MP3 with "Ray Charles" in the author slot could be just about anything.
One song in particular struck a big note with me - Crying Time. A few weeks ago, hearing it would have absolutely torn me to pieces - but funnily enough, hearing it today made me feel a little bit of melancholy, but mostly a sense of wry self-appraisal and relief. Nobody should have to live their life inside the lyrics of that song... and over the past year, I've done so entirely too much. That's a fucked up way to live, but now that I've finally woken up, I don't have to live it anymore.
That ain't everything, but it's certainly something.
