Hazy Shades of LIfe

Music was a big part of my life when I was growing up.  I don't mean concerts or listening to cassette tapes or radio.  I mean making music or listening and watching my father and his brothers play guitars.  My family sang together in church a quartet of sorts, with my Mom, Dad and two sisters, my dad accompanying with the guitar.  As  little kid in our very informal church I took a seat in the choir on Sundays and felt myself lifted up in the waves of melody and harmony, the deep altos blending so beautifully with the sopranos and tenors, my dad in the back row with a few other men belting out those bass notes like nobody's business, but the blending of it all elevated my spirits.  I remember feeling as if all the sound were coming from inside my own head, my own voice finding a part and learning to sing it as I followed along with another alto or tenor, finding my niche was natural to me.

When I was 10 or 11 we met a lady who played an autoharp.  It is likely the easiest instrument on Earth to play, but I wanted one very badly so I could sit and play music with my dad and his brothers.  I wanted to be included.  So my dad found one for me for my 11th birthday, gave me picks and a song book that told me what notes to play.  The chords were all marked on the keyboard, and soon by playing music with my dad, learning he positioning of his left hand on the guitar neck, I learned all the chords that make up a key.  Pretty soon I was playing along with them, without having to watch their hands--somehow my ears or my brain just knew which note came next.

From there I graduated to a little toy organ.  I spent hours picking out notes on it, learning to read music all by myself.  I watched he pianist at church and felt so envious.  Anytime there was an unguarded piano I'd make my way to it and try to pick out some tunes.  By the time I was about 15 I was driving my parents crazy with my craving for a piano. A few days before Christmas I came home to find a huge upright piano sitting in my bedroom with a big red bow on top.  I was so excited and surprised I didn't know how to say thank you, so I sat down and played the only little ditty I knew and then went smiling to my father and gave him the biggest hug ever.

I took formal lessons, but I practiced mostly what I wanted.  I sat at that piano for hours a day, making up tunes, learning new ones, observing myself in the mirror to make sure my posture was perfect.  I listened to the way other people played and tried to emulate their styles.  Eventually I got good enough to play in public, although my nerves got the best of me most of the time.

When I got married I spent countless hours playing whatever song popped into my head.  When I was sad, I played.  When I was lonely, I played.  When I was angry or hurt or stressed, the piano absorbed my bad juju and restored me to a place of positivity and hope.

I have my favorite music.  The songs that have spoken to my soul and gotten me through the darkest days and the happiest days of my life.  Music, they say, is therapy for the soul and I believe that's true.  However, there was about a 2 year period of my life when music was not helpful to me.  It was painful.  I found myself thinking too far back in time, my nostalgia brought about by those familiar sounds was too tough to sit in.  Many of the songs about love and heart break and disappointment hit too close to home and I found myself avoiding music to avoid wallowing in my pain.  So the last couple of years, my life has been oddly silent, but comfortingly so.

Over the last few days, I've reconnected with my music.  I listened to Neil Young sing Old Man the other morning, listened to "Comes a Time" and now, on the other side of my hurt, I find hope in those tunes.  Tonight I'm indulging in Simon and Garfunkel, both the sappy sad and the happy.  I'm letting the music take me to someplace new, rather than allowing it to trap me on a train headed backwards, into a past that cannot change to suit me now.

I know that now is what I have, and this train is only moving forward, with background music that sets the mood for the soundtrack of my life.



Here I go.