I remember being in Chicago back in the day, listening to an FM rock station. After a bevy of alternative rock, the DJ suddenly put on the Waltz from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. At the art store where I worked, one of the young hipsters immediately yelled, "Tchaikovsky!" and began conducting with her hands. I'll never forget that moment. We had gone from, say, Throwing Muses to Tchaikovsky, and I remember thinking: How cool was that? Here was music making its own case. It didn't plead. It didn't demand. In its own way, it rocked. And then, after that glorious interlude, it was back to alternative rock. The funny thing was that the classical piece had not seemed out of place. It held its own. It brought to the table its own heft, its own weight. It wasn't preachy. It wasn't better than. It was simply another fiber in the fabric of the day. And maybe that's the way great music should be heard. Not fenced off by genre. Not placed behind glass. Not approa...
They were up in the Hollywood Hills, posing, taking selfies, walking around, doing the things that future lovers do.
Lucky had not said it yet.
But as she and Dr. Mark Hodge wandered around and checked out the scene, as the night sky came alive with twinkling lights, as the sweet fragrance of quiet settled over everything, as those irresponsible views suggested that absolutely anything could happen, they were getting there.
And music would help seal the moment.
Once they got back inside.
Of Norway’s “Spirit Lights,” in the fabulous Adriatique mix.
It would be the music that helped Lucky realize something profound. It would sit forever in her mind alongside that moment—the night when something unspoken suddenly crystallized into certainty.
She loved Mark Hodge.
But love, Lucky would discover, is not merely something you say.
And a memory is not merely something you remember.
Sometimes a memory waits.
It sits quietly somewhere inside you, seemingly content to remain a beautiful relic of another night, another place, another time.
Until you need it.
And much later, when everything around Lucky had become uncertain, when the people she loved were threatened and the future itself seemed to be slipping away, that night would return to her.
The Hollywood Hills.
The stars.
Those irresponsible views.
Mark.
The music.
“Spirit Lights.”
And the memory would remind Lucky that love was about much more than saying I love you beneath a beautiful night sky.
It was about what those words meant when the beautiful night was gone.
Mark.
Gunz.
Family.
Home.
Earth.
A future.
Everything she loved.
Everything she intended to keep.
Everything she would fight for.
And, if it came to that—
everything she was willing to die for.
Dreamy, swinging, working its way effortlessly around every contour, “Spirit Lights” settles into a space and refreshes it, aiding and abetting the moment without ever overwhelming it.
This is what the best EDM can do.
It can slip almost unnoticed into a moment and become part of it.
Then years, months, days—or perhaps only hours—later, a few notes can bring everything rushing back.
The place.
The person.
The feeling.
The reason.
“Spirit Lights” helped Lucky understand what she loved.
Later, its memory would remind her just how much that love was worth.
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