Funny how, in our generation, music transformed from
something you would sing, or play on your guitar or piano, or your friends
would play at any old gathering, their guitars and mandolins and banjos and
fiddles always at the ready to swoon you on through the night.
To something you went out to hear, and
be moved by or dance to. To something now you poke in machines: computers or
phones or CD players .
My older brother was a local bass player ,
the muse taking him in its arms when he was 16. A long gestational period
of extensive Blues, followed by early Dylan, then Hendrix , Joplin, and
Cream.
They would confound me, until, much
like classical music, the repetition would create an infrastructure within me,
and one day I would wake, and 'get' that music.
His muse led me and taught me as it
taught him. As I sat by his side and he played his guitar, the church organ. As
I became swept away with what grew up in him and began to blossom.
My first boyfriend played guitar. I
watched him learn, and then improve, playing gigs with my brother, and my
best friend's girlfriend.
When we broke up , he gave me his
Yamaha 12 string, and I gazed at pictures of chords, struggling to place my
fingers just so, as songs birthed inside of me, waiting patiently for me to
learn how to play chords to convey them, to sing.
What a thing a music muse is.
Different than a painting muse, a writing or photography muse. All of them
sitting up to take note of any stirring of angst , conflict, joy or grief, as
the summoning arrives ,to stand , and have the current of intensity thunder
through that form.
The bittersweet resonation of minor
chords. The breathlessness imbued by a series of magnetic chord changes. How we
are succored or cheered on by music. The feeling in our bodies.
Once my sister gave my youngest a
globe, with all these buttons , to quiz yourself about places in the world. One
of the settings was for music, so you could touch all over the earth, and hear
musical pieces from that land. We were all enthralled, and to this day, I'd
give anything for another of those . In
our family, we would sit and delight in the mind boggling variety of remarkable
music. Later, I would bring the globe to my office, for kid clients to play
with, while I addressed their asthma, their learning problems, their
immunity.
Today, as happens with all of us,
sometimes, songs often appear in my head. Oliver Sacks calls this musicophilia
. Mine are always songs that have to do with what is happening in this moment.
Like a little person inside of me, providing on cue the pertinent sound track.
I stop, listen to the song, and laugh, as I get the message. Truly, I could not
intentionally think up all those songs for those moments, if I tried.
But what comfort we derive from a
song. An orchestra. Humming a tune. Lyrics springing up into our insides, like
a dear friend. Melding into whatever is easy or hard, on any old particularly
spectacular day.
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