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The sneaky lingering of mourning, music and the human touch.
(a not so happy blog)
Sometimes I get so emotional I cant even listen to music and music is what I do 24/7 -for a living.
I realize only from time to time that most regular folks don't have music poking in at their hearts round the clock. You know how when you have a broken heart from a love affair gone wrong or someone you love dies or you are just having a rotten day and music can either lift you up or more likely get inside that heart of yours and slowly rip it wide open??? Well I can't escape it. AND, I'm still in mourning (tho these day it isn't something I am aware of until it sneaks up and bites my ass yet again. )
When I'm not singing or writing music I have the pleasure of teaching and/or directing other singers.
So there is music all day long. Though many times I'm involved in it scientifically if you will its MUSIC for Gods sake and it crawls into my heart and it hurts... or it helps. But either way it insists you feel things. I can't turn it off or I don't pay the rent and I feel enough as is thank you very much. So in this continued period of mourning, here I am.
I LOVE YOU MORE TODAY THEN YESTERDAY: My friend posted it on Facebook. I used to love that song. I was a young teenager and happy and hopeful is my minds recollection of it. But when I actually went to youtube to listen to it I see me in a purple and white stripped dress and sunglasses my mom bought me. I'm tryin to be happy and hopeful, but I'm walking towards Lenox Hill Hospital to visit my beautiful mother who isn't going to be here for too many more years.
I have to turn it off.
I want to show a client friend of mine an example of something Jane Monheit does and I put on her singing LIKE A STAR - I cant even listen to 2 measures of it. Before I went to lunch with “him” this came on the radio and it remains the song that informed me that he was to be one of the great loves of my life.
You stupid lying sack of shit song.
A singer joins us in class yesterday and she did a good job of THE SONG REMEMBERS WHEN. Then we talk about it, work on it and Rick does something at the piano that helps her get more “in touch” with it. She does it again and I'm transported back to my 20's. There's hope yet again and I'm with David. Even though the memory is good- Ouch. David was so long ago and I'm so in need of the human touch. We were young and exploratory and too naive to know that “touching” each other like that was not going to come as easily as we traveled on. Remembering and feeling all this is fruitless for the moment as I am sad and a bit lost (mourning will do to a person.)
Glad class is over for today.
Before I went home I had the pleasure of talking to 2 other musical folks for awhile. We were excitedly dissecting the way a seasoned performer sang an old standard. We all speak the same language so the conversation would be in some kind of code to a “laymen”. We quickly get to the meat of it all where we admit how very moved we were to hear every single word she sang on the last phrase. How when someone that in-touch with their hearts and music can sing a lyric, every single word she sings is beyond the Gods honest truth. We all appreciate it so much we share our joy about it but as we say the words to each other, even just musics lyrics have crawled inside me and grip a little too tightly for today:
(Love) its a heartache either way, but beautiful. And I'm thinking, if you were mine, I'd never let you go. And that would be but beautiful,
I know.
LYRICS: About 10 years ago I realized I hum a lot. Not unusual when you are a singer. But it was brought to my attention when I would get in taxis and the driver would say “Oh, you are happy” “What?” it took me a while to figure out they assumed I was happy because I was humming which I didn't even realize I was doing. Most of the time I was either writing something or learning something, but it seems I'm always humming. For me it does not always go hand in hand with joy. Certainly not these days. What it is tho, very clearly, is the key to my subconscious. If I am humming just a melody and I think of the words that go with it (Of course I know the words to nearly everything) and I bring them to mind along with the tune, it is EXACTLY the “words” to my thoughts at the time and often (which is excellent I must say) the “answer” to what I have been pondering. Nifty little built in psychic ability really.
I am in dire need of the human touch right now. I think we all always are and stay away from it more then we should. If we have families, as we grow older kids can fill that space beautifully. Sex can help too but I'm talking about the deliberate and realized touch of another's soul with the aid of the physical.
Come on … how often do you do that? Get that? Acknowledge how much you could use that?
We don't. If you are married and things are OK, you get some of that, but deliberately and fearlessly? Not so much right?
At the end of my dads life there was much of that. He would very bravely look into our eyes and say he loved us. It was magnificent. I recall it and get welled up with emotion as even now, tears are spilling out of my eyes. It was the real thing and I am a huge fan of the real thing. I would touch him, hold his hand, he'd hold mine. Wow. How fast life flies by without that sort of thing huh? If we are lucky enough to have it again, we are reminded of how much it matters. No wonder we carry on as if its not that important. If its going to be sparse, why remember it exists at all? We go to work, we kiss on the cheek hello and goodbye, we have sex. Thank God we have children. We are braver and more tender giving and receiving from kids. Thank God for the ones in my life I get to hold and be held by in return....
...but we are adults and its more then that:
Over a year ago now, I sat in a car, in a parking lot, with a stunning view of the 7/11 across the street and held hands. We looked at each other, we talked and didn't talk and held hands. About 6 months ago we put our lips near one another's and just held them there for a minute or two.
The human touch. The deliberate human touch.
That's what music does. “Touches” you. The human you. It is the closest to the physical touch I can get without another person today. In a way perhaps its even more intimate because its between me and me, between you and you.
This is difficult tho because its like having a cut that needs to be tended to. The very thing you need to help you heal is the thing that “hurts/stings” the most, so we stay away from it.
For the time being, if you are not going to hold me and you don't want me to hold you in return or you cant touch me because you are no longer here to look into my eyes and tell me that you love me, then turn off the fucking music for a few seconds cuz it reminds me of how alive I want to be again and for moment - am not.
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