41 Weeks left (12 weeks down...or three months...or one QUARTER of the deployment.)
? pounds lost (I'm traveling and on the road and don't have access to a scale. This is a good thing.)
15 months until the wedding
As we have previously discussed, I was trained in my youth as a musician (more specifically, a singer...which some instrumentalists might argue means I’m not *actually* a musician…ah, music geek jokes. Never get old.) So yes, I’m a singer and a lover of words, and therefore my head is jumbled mess of song lyrics mostly all the time. In fact, for awhile I maintained that if truly pressed I could likely communicate very effectively using only song lyrics (though as I’ve grown up and developed some intellect and a sense of humor, I would require that to truly communicate fully I also be allowed to use quotes and phrases from “Saturday Night Live” sketches and basically anything from seasons 1-4 of “The West Wing.”) Yes, so... Saturday Night Live, West Wing, and my encyclopedic, freakish ability to remember obscure song lyrics and to produce them in even more obscure situations would be all the language skill necessary to cover all manner of conversation and range of emotion for me. (I’ve often said that I could probably cure all diseases known to man if I could take the brain space that is currently holding on to 1980’s pop lyrics and fill it with useful information instead.)
But here is the question that I pose this evening: Can you ever really divorce a song from its context of first hearing? Are there songs whose words are so powerful that you can forget how and where you learned them? For example…A really good love song that you associate with, say, your first junior high boyfriend…can it ever be a song for another person? Can the emotion conjured by those words and music transcend situation or particular person? Or (true story), the song you performed in your grade school glee club that you didn’t realize was actually a G rated re-write of an R-rated song (e.g. I sang “joy to the world” by Three Dog Night in 2nd grade. I remember it clearly. When as an adult I realized that the song was actually about drinking and sex, I was aghast. Turns out it’s not just a cute children’s song about a bullfrog named Jeremiah. Seriously, though. Listen to it sometime and try to imagine what the 8 year old version of that sounded like. Amazing.)
I offer this question up tonight for discussion because I would have probably said, before my very random listening experience this evening, that I did not believe this contextual divorce to be possible: First impressions, especially when it comes to music, sorta have a tendency to stick. But as I sit here and listen to the “Songs that make me think of you” mix I made for J for Valentine’s Day this year I think I’m going to have to officially change my opinion on the matter (don’t worry…for those of you just joining us here, I have already acknowledged how cheesy and awful such a CD production was in the first place. And I’m over the heaving bawling that accompanied listening to it directly post- J’s deployment, so, you know, progress.) Tonight, as I take a bus to
I have on occasion in the past divorced music from lyrics. For example, if a song has *great* lyrics and mediocre musical production, I can still love the song (take, much of the Indigo Girls catalog for example- every song is sheer lyrical poetry- but musically, eh, most are great, some are fine, many are just ok.) Or, if a song is beautifully written and the music is to die for, I can let go some strange lyrics (see for example, 65% of Ben Folds’ work. I still love him more than what is reasonable.) So, I have known for awhile that I am able to divorce music and lyrics from one another on occasion. And I think that most of us do that without thinking about it, because it’s rare that the music and the lyrics of a song are both perfect (take a minute and think about your favorite songs.) But man, when it happens…and usually you can’t put your finger on the why, but somehow you just *know* and are transported to a place of beauty that words or music alone cannot express. This friends, is what they call art. It is mystical and it is perfect. And it’s why those of us who produce art do so: to create that feeling (or at least have access to it) as often as possible.
Now it goes without saying that I love all the songs on J’s mix (or they wouldn’t be there.) They are songs we both love. Songs we have listened to together. Secret favorites that we would never admit to anyone else that we have even heard of, let alone acknowledge that we can sing along to every.single.word. But of the 28 songs (yes, there are 28) on this mix, I had never considered any to be art.
Not anymore, friends. After tonight, there is one. One that I now consider to be pure art: the perfect combination of music and poetry, arrangement and performance. And I hadn’t much thought about it before now, but wow. I was really struck speechless this evening by its simple beauty. And those who know me know that this is no small feat.
(Maybe that’s the trick to all this—that when it is “art” it can transcend situation and context. But why was this tune just now seeming so to me?)
It occurred to me that maybe the reason I was able to feel this way, finally, after having known and loved this song for literally the last 25 years was because this evening was the first time I was just *listening* to the song. I wasn’t listening to the song in the incredibly sad context of the Broadway musical from whence it comes, fully produced in Broadway fashion, at the very end of a three-and-a-half-hour epic, tragic, love story. Tonight, sandwiched in between pop tunes, love songs, rock anthems, and jazz standards, it stood alone solely on the merits of its musicality, its simple lyrics, and its stunning performance. Or maybe I was just listening tonight with different ears.
For the first time, ever, I heard the song not as the heartbreaking ballad of lovers separated by family feuds, death, and impossible circumstances, but rather as a simple love song of hope and tenderness. In the context of this Broadway play, I do in fact, cry every time I hear this song…and I’ve probably seen the play upwards of 20 times. But tonight, when I really listened to the music and lyrics free of context, sung by an a cappella quartet that made it all sound so easy; so clean; so flawless, it took on an entirely new meaning. Tonight’s tears (yup, still cried) were tears of inspiration, hope and patience. Patience as a woman-in-love dreams of a day when she and her star-crossed lover can finally just *be*. Sing it sister. I’m with ya.
But I think more importantly than discovering art and potentially my new anthem, I realized how important it is to take time on occasion to put on different ears. As I teach in my classes, context is everything. Challenge your assumptions. Reframe situations. The stuff you think you know by heart, reread again for the first time. The music that has stuck with you for lo these many years, listen again. Find a new message. Draw new inspiration. Put on a different set of ears.
In that spirit this evening I offer you new ears. Not in sadness or in tragedy how I had always heard this song before, but rather with a hopeful eye to the future, I offer you “Somewhere” from the Broadway musical West Side Story. If you don’t know the context, please, don’t look it up. Appreciate it as it is, sung here by Celtic Women, as a piece of art, in *this* context, for the first time ever.
Somewhere
There’s a place for us, somewhere a place for us.
Peace and quiet and open air, wait for us…somewhere.
There’s a time for us, someday a time for us.
Time together with time to spare.
Time to learn, time to care.
Somehow, some day, We’ll find a new way of living.
We’ll find a way of forgiving. Somewhere…
There’s a place for us, a time and place for us.
Hold my hand and we’re halfway there.
Hold my hand and I’ll take you there
Somehow…someday! Somewhere…
Celtic Women sing “Somewhere”
Monday, June 7, 2010
Music and Lyrics
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