“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” Plato
I am writing these first words on Sunday afternoon (8/16), just as LaLa is on its way outta here. I am home, music on, Shelby the Cat curled up in the pouch of her kitty tree, without a goddamn thing to do. I am a sucker for introspection, which is a one word description for taking a journey inside yourself, always finding surprises.
Today’s weather is perfectly orchestrated for a symphonic sojourn into the crevices of my mind. I think when you get to a certain time in your life, you realize those fissures have always been there, waiting for you to shine the light of attention. Maybe, getting a very slight taste of nature’s fury had me taking cover inside myself.
Sitting on my ass, riveted to a screen with nothing of any interest happening. Rain Man thoughts and not much else, saved by my closest friend, music. Of course, I now have to tell you what I mean and that’s a bitch. I am forced to bring up the most complicated word in the world, LOVE. It defines the highest level of feeling a living being can embrace. It is a kind of wordless, soul perfection
Shit, I am about to ruin this story and here is why, Lou Reed, singing Walk On the Wild Side. I will get back to where I was, but if I don’t do this right now, it won’t be the story I want to share. Music is like heart dialysis for me. It lets my heart rest on a bed of sounds I have weaved for it. My mind becomes weightless and often click dances on to a page, like now.
I was around for a cappella Do Wop in my high school bathroom, reverberating up and down the hallways. Way before that, it was always a part of my life. I can see myself sitting on the stoop of my house in Flushing, Queens, with a palm-sized, turquoise transistor radio in my right hand. I’d be listening to My Prayer by The Platters. I remember running across the street to my friend, Alan Small’s house in my underwear, to watch Elvis on Ed Sullivan. The Small’s even had a finished basement with a bar. I’m not kidding. I just erased a bunch of shit I have written following the basement mention. It was a boring litany of my personal and professional, musical credentials. By the way, they are pretty damn good ones, but not for now.
I lied. I have to mention just a few and hope you don’t mind. I seriously worked on a Beatles’ reunion in the early 80’s. I even had a high level meeting at the UN to talk about an internationally broadcast reunion as a benefit for UNICEF. My supposed contact with the group turned out to be bogus. In the summer of ’89, I promoted a major concert series in Santa Fe, NM called Music in the Pines. A few years later, I got involved with a very small British record label, called RunRiver Records. I even secured national distribution. The owner fell prey to his Hemingway complex and alcohol did not preserve the label or him. Still there, I was instrumental in putting a radio station on the air, Radio Free Santa Fe. I even sold Gospel music videos on BET before leaving for here. I am done, I swear.
Music has always been a spectator sport for me, but not without my trying. As a Jewish kid, growing up in Flushing Queen in the 50’s, piano lessons were a given. My brother was pretty good, while I couldn’t even find MIDDLE C on the keyboard. I was awful and suffered through the lessons for a while.
The imaginary musician returned to haunt me, while living the textbook life on Long Island, commuting to work on the LIRR. I don’t know what came over me. I wanted to learn to play guitar. I found a guy in Greenwich Village. Once a week, I’d get on the LIRR, with my case strapped over my business suit. I was fucken cool! However, I could never figure out where to put my fingers on what strings and where on the fretboard? I was forced to give up the rock star dream.
There weren’t endless tries at music, but there is just one more. A handful of years ago, here on Kauai, I decided to take singing lessons. I know I got plenty of company, when it comes to singing, as long as nobody hears you. I’ll bet you do it. Learning to play an instrument was never going to work. I have always been fond of my voice and it was going to be my last shot at actually being in the music, I did it a bunch of times, while trying learn to sing like Sinatra’s Fly Me To The Moon. Why not try to learn from perfection? I am so glad I did it. It was a very big deal for me, even though it was short lived. I am now at peace with never being a rock legend.
OK, if you don’t mind, I want to go back a bunch of paragraphs, to pick up where we left off, right before Lou Reed fucked it all up for us.
Something happened to my relationship with music and I really had to think about when I became inseparable from it. Travel back with me in time to Monday, June 1, 1987. It was when I began my cross country drive to Santa Fe, NM to live. I jettisoned everything familiar to me and everyone I loved, to start a life of my own choosing. My roller skate-sized, Dodge Colt was equipped with a ghetto blaster, headphones, cassettes provided by a friend, topped off by my NY Yankee baseball cap. Last, but not least, a dozen beautifully rolled joints. Something happened on that rocket launch in to a new world.
There I was, a terranaut on an internal voyage with music filling all those spaces inside of me. I never really listened to music on headphones before and that is when it became deeply engrained in all those crevices between my ears. As a result of that experience, I suddenly gave up any genre distinction, liberating my ears, miraculously embracing all music. Honestly, I don’t know why. This freshly kindled love affair continued throughout my 15 years in the high desert country. It allowed me to paint my very own multi-dimensional, musical landscape without any sound interference. I discovered that silence when I moved to Santa Fe. It is really hard to appreciate any sounds amidst the cacophony of urban noise. This otherworldly silence followed me across the Pacific to the Garden Island.
Finally, I can get to what started me on this story in the first place. By the time I got to Kauai in 2003, music streaming was beginning to revolutionize the listening experience. It became my constant companion when I began writing my memoir to my grandson. In my mind, I was composing a word symphony, while accompanied by my chosen soundtrack. It made itself heard throughout my life story. I never hesitated to share what I was listening to, kind of making it a story within a story. Plus, I wanted to let my grandson know how important music is to me.
I have enough grey matter left to recall last Sunday. It is now several days later and time has this magical way of coalescing the puzzle pieces on the memory clock. I had just driven home from Kalaheo at around 6:30AM. I was too focused on getting home alive, not feeling it until walked in the door here and set up the screen and plugged in the machines. I was now sitting on my perch above the world. Man, my chest had an emotional python around it, while my mind was looking for a compass.
Instinctively, I activated my tunes, sloppily tucked away in Pandora’s Vault. I knew the best thing for me right then was to write about something, anything. Christ, we take so many people and things for granted. On that Sunday morning, music felt like a life raft for me and she deserves all the credit in the world. As long as there is music, you are never alone and maybe that’s the ticket. Sometimes, I think my words just accompany the music.
The best I can do is compose some thoughts and hope you hear them inside.
Thank you for listening to my words in the key of gratitude.
LISTEN TO IT HERE:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1292459/episodes/19678534-words-are-music