How Can I Go On?

We never listen(ed) to this enough -- perhaps my favorite singer/my favorite song.

How Can I Go On, Freddy Mercury
I have no idea how this happened, and I'm almost embarrassed to admit it, but until 2002 I had never heard of Queen. I may have heard some of their songs, but never knew the band. During the "Queen era" I was stationed overseas and simply missed a lot of good music. But I must have been really in a "bad place" not to have heard Queen.

Then, in 2002, the US Air Force sent me to northern England for a special duty assignment; it was open ended. I did not know how long I would be there. I thought my days of traveling for the Air Force were over; I was never more depressed than that summer when I left for England.

I remember checking into the inn, and turning on the television after a long flight. Wow, there was nothing on. And then, for some reason, there was some celebration, the Queen's birthday? I don't recall, but I heard Queen for the first time and was blown away. I became addicted. I could not get enough of Queen. I did not know the "back story" of Freddy Mercury. It didn't matter.

And then, the more I read about him, the more I knew about him, the more I listened to him, the more I loved Queen.

I was sent back to that remote air station in northern England several times over the course of the next two years or so. I came to love Yorkshire. The trips became life-altering events, a second, maybe my third coming of age.

And now I associate Queen with that time in northern England. 

I could listen to this, over and over, through the night.