After is week like this, I realize again how important music is to me. It's been one hell of a week... a hell of a good week, a hell of a bad week. I have flown atop the clouds; I have wallowed in the filth. I cursed my friends and drank to my enemies. I took counsel from someone who will break my heart, and betrayed someone who will dress my wounds. This week, I have said things I never imagined I would say (good AND bad), and likewise, I have heard things I never imagined I would hear. And I lived. Smiles and tears, alert and afraid, I LIVED! Truly, this was the textbook example week for the concept of the duality of the Southern thing
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The week began with an abnormal fixation. My father died over 30 years ago. usually, I'm fine on Fathers Day. This year, on the spur of the moment, I took almost half of my show talking about my dad, sharing memories and talking about his love of music. The next day, as I was on the air, I seemed to see a reminder of Roxanne at every turn, even hearing her voice as I imagined the things she would say to me. I had multiple technical and protocol problems at work -- not my fault, but within my control -- causing me to have an atypical complaint session with my bosses. Moments after arriving for a planned evening with friends, I bailed (at the request of my superiors) to cover a repetitive SNAFU at my job, only to get my car stuck on an embankment as I tried to leave. Moments later, I got a "never mind" phone call. The words which spilled from my mouth over the ensuing five minutes would be familiar to any sailor or stable boy.
Back in the non-radio world, I did one of the bravest things I've done since Rox's death.... so brave and personal that I'm not ready to blog about it yet. My daughter brought me distressing, tragic news from within her husband's family. I got to spend wonderful time with a dear friend I'd not seen in months. I clawed and circled with the one person who's always there for me, right or wrong. I caught another person whom I considered a friend in a bare-faced lie... a lie which cost me a chunk of money. I capped off this noteworthy week by oversleeping and missing a birthday party for one of the few non-radio friends that I have.
After a week like this, I need music. I need to listen to something which grips my heart and my mind. I need to honor my pain. I need to know that the pain will bring forth something precious and beautiful. I listen to Jackson Browne, and think about how his most poignant work came as he was coming to terms with the suicide of his wife.
I listen to John Lennon, to Jim Croce, to Harry Chapin, and to Bob Marley, and wonder how they must feel -- wherever they are -- that in our world, we are denied all the unwritten songs and untold stories a full lifetime would have borne. I listen to the symphonies and operas of Mozart, and I know that grace and beauty have no limits. I listen to Warren Zevon, and I see how that same grace and beauty can be personified in the way a man chooses to face his own imminent death.
I do not remember a time in my life when I did not retreat into music. I should have known all along that I would end up on the radio, serving a daily helping of love songs, party songs, rebel songs, desperate, triumphant, futile, celebratory... there is no end to the moods they evoke. Music is God's most perfect form of communication. You can hide from spoken words. You can hide from printed words. You can hide from pictures, preaching, and philosophy.
But a song.... The right song, at the right time, rushes into your soul, past all your walls and defenses, and instantly strikes at your heart. This flood of emotion is something from which you can not hide. It binds itself to you. Tightly. Each of us can remember one unfamiliar, unknown song which we heard one day by chance. The thought behind the music strikes us so deeply that our mind refuses to let it go until we hear it again and can identify it. Months, sometimes years pass, but it stays there, imprinted on our soul.
So after a week like this, I return to music. And as always, the music awaits me. The song, as Led Zeppelin says, remains the same. It is essential, probably more so in 2012, The year Of Essentials. From the beginning, it is the song of my life, and now, it remains the song of LIFE 4.0.
Today's Lesson? Maybe there is none, except the lesson we learn whenever music comforts us... that all life is weaved in communion with its surroundings. No matter how threadbare it becomes, we still can find song after song after song to ignite the things we feel in our soul. And when we rise, or we fall, or we die trying, there will be a song we will then sing.
StevenK
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