an open letter ...

Some of us are musical, others not so much. But whether we play our Fender Stratocasters to overflowing auditoriums or struggle through Chopsticks on a keyboard, music can be the defining backbeat of our lives. Scientists often point out that it rivals olfactory input -- the aroma of Thanksgiving turkey, the sweet scent of honeysuckle on a warm May afternoon -- in terms of its power to virtually transport us to a specific time and place.

Ad-Rock, MCA, Mike D. To a big chunk of the population, just a random jumble of letters. To others, purveyors of meaningless noise. But to a specific group of a certain age, these were some of the maestros of our youth.

I remember the day my friends and I first heard a Beastie Boys song. Still in school; still blissfully, defiantly vague about the future; the world of tests and term papers and dates and dances, of pool parties, proms, summer jobs and secret crushes stretching out for seemingly endless eons in front of us.

"Girls," yelped the CD player in a nasal, in-your-face Brooklyn twang, and then "girls," once again, just to make sure we were thoroughly clear on the subject. And from that moment on we were hooked, our feet bounding exuberantly to the nearest dance floor and our nascent analytical skills oblivious to nit-picky terms like "derogatory content" or "social commentary." We were so much like puppies, back then -- so rambunctious and awkward and untested, our energies propelled almost purely by feeling. Those Beast-ly tunes simply fit the bill: loud and raucous, full of sarcastic and snarky shout-outs we could holler and lip-synch in our semi-delusional parodies of cool. Somehow, those songs managed to both mirror and mold the mood at once; prompting us to rejoice in everything and celebrate nothing in particular. Our senses thrummed on overload as we felt, and we felt, and we never stopped to think that a time might come when we would think, and think, and never stop to feel.

You gotta fight ... for your right ... to paaaaaaarty ...

I remember the moment I found out Adam Yauch had died. MCA??? I thought to myself. NO. He could only have been in his forties, went my brain, which by that time had already immersed itself in the sights and sounds of Summer, 1987. I sat at the office, amidst the clicking of keyboards under a flat fluorescent ceiling, and Googled the name. Then I slouched back and blinked, breathing in the news as my iPhone chimed and I picked up a friend's text message coming in concurrently: Did you hear?

There once was a time we subscribed to certain beliefs, certain life-affirming convictions, without ever once recognizing that we carried them. That part came so much later, on a sobering tide of retrospective nostalgia, regret, even remorse -- and by then, they'd already gone. But for the briefest of random split-seconds, a refrain might come floating back just the same, tantalizingly out of reach, while a song echoed faintly in our heads.

And for just a moment, like an old forgotten friend, we'd embrace it all again. The belief that everything would be just fine in the end. That right and wrong were irrefutable absolutes. That goodness would always prevail, and would always be duly rewarded. That love and friendship and laughter and youth could never, ever die.

Then, like the dusty scent of autumn, the present intercedes. And though the melody may drift on indistinctly, in the space of an exhale, the backbeat has faded away.