A long time ago in Guitar Center (yes, I shopped there, wipe that horrified expression off your face) I heard on the overheads what sounded like a Paul Simon tune. It was so far back in my consciousness as I plinked keyboards and examined cables and hefted mic stands that by the time it had picked its way to the front row of my brain the song was nearly over. “Hey,” I thought aloud to the bored cashier. “Is this Paul Simon?”
I liked it too. It’s not exactly what he brought to the table with his Simon and Garfunkel stuff, and certainly not what he brought with Graceland or Rhythm of the Saints, but there was something, some flavor, some clearness that caught me.
Lately my struggle has been with understanding my place in the musical universe. What am I really saying? Does it matter? Is anyone listening? I’d started thinking that real music was wrung out of bearded young guitar players pouring out their spirits into tin cups on dirty sidewalks. Struggle equals depth. Starving equals raw beauty.
As I listened to Mr. Simon explain the differences in the way a life is lived, based on choices--so beautiful, or so what--I began to understand what this life of music has made of me. There have been times when music has held the place of honor at the table, and others when it’s been relegated to the junk drawer, tarnishing slowly until unearthed once more in a random spring clean. Always present though. Always percolating somewhere, doing something, growing perhaps sideways, in dimensions I couldn’t see or feel until I actually pulled a song out and sang it, cold after so many years, yet possessing a new layer that I didn’t remember adding.
Those young musical creatures. Geniuses, and something like pasta primavera. They sing with a pop and a sizzle that comes from the very young. It isn’t something you hold onto forever. You don’t really want or need to. It’s just a thing that comes with youth, like the ability to get drunk and pop up out of bed next day, fully refreshed, after only two hours of sleep. It’s fine while it’s there, it adds a flavor, and then something else comes along to replace it.
Me, I sing from years of just plain singing. From feeling the river of sound travel through my body. From the feel of my hands moving across the keys while floating my voice over it. From getting my ass kicked musically by life. From forcing myself to be brave enough to sing in front of people who weren’t listening, and, sometimes worse, those who were. Going from that hot flushed feeling when you hit a bad note to more of a “huh. sour note. now it’s gone” feeling. From raising a child while simultaneously trying to keep all my other channels open. I try to write the stories that come from what I have learned, from the other side of each decade as it comes, unbidden and unwanted, but now at least not feared. They have a different flavor than the songs of my spring chicken fevered youthiness. They’re just ... different. Not better. Not worse. Trying to tell the truth, rather than be cute. So many more things to think about than broken hearts. Trying to see what really is there. It parallels what is happening in my life. An acceptance of myself, of the world, of music. Less self rebuke.
In energy class there were three ways of running energy: pull, push, and allow. That’s self explanatory, right? Allowing seemed to be the most used, and perhaps the most important. Just standing there. Allowing. Breathing. Not reaching or forcing, but just being.
Perhaps that’s the biggest lesson I have learned, and somehow have to re-learn on nearly a daily basis. Just stand. Just be. Open your mouth and let the song fall out. There’s no other you, and no matter how hard you try you can’t be someone else. It just doesn’t work.
Martha Graham said it so beautifully: “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.”
And so I keep learning the lesson. Be me. Be me. Just inhabit my skin, and be me. It’s how we all came in, as babies, until we learn manners and social acceptance and how to conform. That’s fine, until the day we reach the point where we just can’t do it anymore and our true fiery selves come bursting out of the protective covering we’ve so carefully constructed. Yeah. That day. That’s a really good day.
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