Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Today in chapel, the speaker used the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" to illustrate a point he was making. Entirely aside from the fact that his point was about sex, thus ruining the song that defined my childhood, let me tell you about the other reason I couldn't stand his use of the song.

I do this thing when I listen to music. I did it more when I was little. When I hear a song, or especially an album, it has a shape to it. Like, as the music progresses, it's going different directions spatially. These days it often takes on the direction of the lyrics printed in the CD insert, but I remember a couple of cassettes I used to listen to as a kid, and I can still name most of the songs on them based on where they fall on the shape of the cassette as a whole. Because The Wizard of Oz and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" were such a big part of my childhood, the song has a really, really distinct shape, sort of like this:



So when the speaker played someone's cover of the song, and it didn't follow the original one EXACTLY, I started getting really pissed off that the shape was wrong. I don't even really remember how the song related to the point he ended up making. Which is probably for the best, because I really don't want to think about sex the next time I watch my all-time favorite movie.