Music of the Day:

Race You, by Elizabeth & the Catapult

I'm gonna race you race you race you race you back home.

The sun's going down now,

And I'm ready to go, I'm ready to go.

'Cause there's dirt on my skirt and pebbles stuck in my toes.

Oh which way should we go down?

Nobody knows, nobody knows.

'Cause there's a shortcut down the beaten path,

One step to the right, three to the left.

The moon's so high,

The wind's so fast;

Makes us feel like goddesses.

1 2 3 set ready set go.

May heaven help you if you're slow.

We're gonna run like bandits,

While the flames are chasin',

Racin' racin' racin' racin' back home.

Roll, roll, roll.

Run, run, run.

Meet me at the bottom

After I have won...

I love this song. It's one of those songs that transports you someplace entirely different. You close your eyes and you're 12 again, running barefoot and carefree through field or forest, fording streams or crawling fallen logs across creeks. Running just to run; just because it's fun and it feels good. My mom sent me an e-mail today describing the farm and fence and stream in West Virginia that she went to in her mind when she hears this song. Not that she's ever frolicked in West Virginia. But a song like this expands reality. It charges the imagination.

Where do you go when you close your eyes and race like a bandit, down the hills?

photos: Taller Children Album Art, Kerstin Zu Pan from vi.sualize.us, SeaLegsLexi from Flikr, Monica Fadul from Flikr, Cowgirlblues from vi.sualize.us, Nikki De Carlo.