Unless you’re a Millennial Retro Hipster or club DJ, GEN-Xer or Boomer, you may not be familiar with the “groove” for which I am about to speak… the one embedded in old school vinyl.
A record at 45, 33 1/3 or 78 rotations per minute aka RPM is
a slick black piece of analog sound storage that can only be heard when a
needle touches it.
If you think about that concept, it’s pretty amazing.
When the cassette tape came out, they said vinyl was dead.
When 8-Track came out, they said vinyl was dead. When the CD and iTunes came
out they said vinyl was dead.
According to The Economist from 2010 to present day, vinyl
sales have TRIPLED in America. Is it
collectors? Is it retro-trending? Nostalgia?
Or is it something more?
When I was a child growing up, my neighborhood
had this ‘trading discs’ thing between kids.
Kids would take their birthday money or for some, allowances and they
would buy records.
For me, I had to earn my cash through entrepreneurial
earnings teaching baton lessons, selling handmade cards, doing calligraphy for
people’s holiday cards they’d send, selling homemade cookies and lemonade and
painting strategic dots and stripes on the fingernails of my classmates. It was
because of this hard work that I took better care of things that were hard
earned.
Music was something the neighborhood would ‘trade’… like a
community library of sorts.
The bummer part was getting your records returned scratched
and having that one lyric repeat and repeat, with that needle getting stuck in
the groove of that record.
As most of the kids and teens would experiment spinning
records backwards to listen for hidden subliminal messages gossiped about by
the media, or out of sheer enthusiasm get careless with someone else’s
property…scratches were rampant.
I had to get creative and stack quarters on top of the needle
so it wouldn’t jump over the scratch like a speed bump and instead, play the
song through. Sometimes I was successful, sometimes I wasn’t – but for the most
part it worked like a charm.
Looking back, I see that “groove” like life. We get scratches… it happens.
However, like putting quarters on a needle, if we work
‘through them’ – we can overcome them.
Though much like the needle on a scratched record, many stay stuck in
the ‘blip-repeat’ zone of life.
Yeah, I see you record playing souls smiling at this one
with an ‘ah ha’ look. Hehe
As we dig into that groove more literally, we can eliminate
the repetitive place where we get stuck.
In turn, (oh happy pun accident), we can actually LINK TO
THE GROOVE and understand what the scratch is actually about once we address
it.
Now, let’s take the other context of ‘groove’ as in your
groove of life. There is an actual
groove, there is a tune you can feel and that is your intuition and higher
self.
When we are in tune with it, life has fewer speed bumps in
terms of confusion or feeling ‘out of sorts’ because we’re actually connected
from a bass line. Sometimes it’s just
easier to look at your heart as a rhythmic drum beat of sorts and take on your
deeper comprehension of life from there.
You have a natural flow of energy. Your energy gravitates toward the things that
resonate – both logically and intuitively, when you remain grounded in your
being.
This is what I call the “YES” or “NO” factor in reasoning
and truth.
If we condition our brains to stay stuck on the scratch, our
‘default’ answer is always going to be similar to the ‘repeat’ mode of the
scratch in the record of our life. For
instance, if you always say “Yes” without thinking or perhaps you never say
“No” and become over-obligated… this is like a scratch and it is where you get
stuck.
This record scratch in our groove affects our
mind-body-soul-spirit health because it causes stress, overwhelmed sensory
experiences and it does not naturally fit in our groove line.
When we become more ‘self-aware’ we automatically tune into
what our truth is in every action we take and the ‘reactions’ actually lesson,
because they don’t need to be there.
WHY?
Well, take a familiar song you know all the lyrics to and
play it in your mind. You know what
lyrics come after each line and you know they are supposed to be there. If we never address the scratch, we never get
to the other lyrics… they never get to play out, therefore the song does not
move forward (i.e. your journey to your destiny) the way that it was actually
intended.
You are supposed to address the scratch… for this is why it
is there. The scratch is supposed to help you identify your strengths, your
abilities to overcome the scratch and understand that there is an entire song
still left to play out.
If you address it, then you don’t need to react to other
scratches on your pathway with the same panic, but rather, you’ll do the work,
put quarters on your needle, work through the groove and continue spinning your
record forward.
Still with me?
The key here is to value the work you put into overcoming
your scratches to stay in your groove. It is here, you can truly dance because
you have more freedom to feel the groove.
It has more meaning at this point because you haven’t chosen to stay
stuck repeating a reaction or a behavior that’s not serving you well.
While your life is like an album and you can skip songs you
don’t like and only play the ones you do like most, the point is to not skip
over taking care of what needs to be taken care of.
It is here, you have the power and ability to get back in
your groove and the rhythm of your life.
With that, stay on track… and yes, this particular song
choice has a ‘double pun’ with groove and trains… which are part of the
soundtrack of your life’s journey.
Namaste.
