music

Advent Reflection – Dec. 8 and Dec. 9

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What role does music play in your faith life? What role does Mary have in your Christian discipleship?

From Daily Reflections for Advent & Christmas: Waiting in Joyful Hope 2016-17 by Birhsop Robert F. Morneau


Music plays such a profound role in the church I attend, both the physical parish and the church of my heart. We are blessed with a beautiful choir and our musical director is so talented and has such an amazing voice. For the Immaculate Conception, he sang Ave Maria, and each Christmas I look forward to his singing of O, Holy Night. It defies description and takes my breath away.

I have always been a fan of Gregorian chants and Welsh choirs are the voices of angels.

It is not only hymns and church music that brings me spirituality. I have an affinity for modern, albeit alternative music that lets me travel in my mind to many places and thoughts. My current favorite is the Hamilton soundtrack and my collection of Supernatural and The Walking Dead music. They truly do feed my soul in ways that only writing typically does.

If the flute is being played, we dance. At Christmas parties and wedding celebrations we eat and drink in moderation. If a dirge sounds, we mourn the loss of a loved one or repent of our sins by doing penance, by practicing asceticism.

From Daily Reflections for Advent & Christmas:Waiting in Joyful Hope 2016-17 by Bishop Robert F. Morneau

We’ve had this difficulty all year – of trying to discern when to dance and when to mourn. This whole year has been a long, drawn out pop culture funeral beginning with David Bowie and Alan Rickman followed by Prince and Muhammad Ali, and continuing most recently with Florence Henderson and John Glenn. Some of them have been harder on my heart than others, but so much of my childhood has been disappearing before my eyes.

It is always difficult to continue living our daily lives with so much sorrow hanging over us. Each death brought me down, but I got back up. We get ourselves back up and we keep going. Because that’s what we do.

After my mother-in-law was hit by a car and almost died three years ago, we thought she’d live forever. She wasn’t supposed to walk or leave the hospital, and she did. As hard as it was, and as long as it took, she was home, she was walking and she was doing great. She is the epitome of energy and independence and inspiration. We are fortunate that my daughter seems to have inherited all of that from her.

We were stunned while on a visit after school let out that she passed away suddenly at the end of June. We were with her earlier in the day, talking, joking, she admiring my daughter’s taste in clothes as well as the discount we got in buying it. Bargains and garage sales made her happy.

Her passing made all the others less significant, and it’s taken a lot to get through it.Thanksgiving without her was difficult and I know that Christmas will be even harder. We didn’t see her for Christmas, but we spoke to her throughout the day. She is missed every day. Her birthday is in a few weeks, and we will continue to struggle with this loss that is so deep and devastating.

50-39 – My Music Studio

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I think when we’re young we think we can do anything. We can fly and run and draw and sing. We sing in the shower. We sing in the car. We sing as long as no one is watching.

We had half a finished basement in our house. Coming down the short staircase, to the left was the bar area. My parents almost never drank, but they collected really. nice bottles of liquor. Most were gifts from friends, visitors to our house, and “tips” from their office.

Chivas Regal, Johnny Walker Blue, Canadian Whisky, and about a dozen more that have left my memory. Oppposite the liquor shelf was a counter, and beneath the counter were the glasses, probably about a dozen of a variety of shapes and sizes.

On top of the counter was a stereo. Big and burly. It was only a turntable with a clear plastic cover and two very large speakers on either side of it. We had a separate eight track player somewhere else, either in the basement or the den, but that was used by my mother mostly.

We had a pretty decent record collection; mostly oldies and showtunes, but for my birthday or Chanukah I was gifted The Beatles Greatest Hits. It was a red album and I think it had four records in the set. We called them records, not vinyl.

I put the record on and set the needle to play. Sometimes I would skip a song by moving the needle carefully to the next groove or the second to next, looking for whatever my favorite song of the day was.

Michelle.

Please, Please Me.

Nowhere Man.

Octopus’ Garden.

Yesterday and Hey Jude.

So many more that if I named them all it would take all day.

If the record sounded a little off, I’d lift the arm and pull the lint off the needle with my fingernails. Then I’d blow on the record to make sure that there was no more dust, and usually the record would play fine.

I had headphones that plugged into the stereo and I would sing along. I had a beautiful voice. At least I thought so. No one else was there to boo or cheer me on, but I sang as if my life depended on it. Maybe I could be the next Beatle. Who knew?

That was how I spent many an afternoon. After school, I’d run downstairs and pull on the big black and silver headpohones and I was in the recording studio, practicing for my upcoming tour.

50-35 – The Alarm

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Equal to Duran Duran for favorite bands growing up, and continuing into adulthood is The Alarm. I had a cassette that I played in the car constantly. I knew every word of every song. It didn’t hurt that they were Welsh at a time when I was obsessed with Welsh history and culture, something else that never went away.

The Alarm also holds another distinctive place in my life’s history.

In 2008, they came out with a new CD – Guerrilla Tactics. I wanted this album desperately.

In 2008, we were barely on the internet. I hadn’t even joined Live Journal then, we had no wifi – wifi was available but we didn’t trust it, so we had to be plugged into the wall. I had my first laptop, its own experiment into personal computing.

When I signed onto Amazon, well, actually, I had to create an account because I had never ordered online before, but when I signed on, I had a choice. I could buy the CD for $14.99 or I could download the MP3 version of the album for $9.99.

I actually thought about this for a couple of days. Eschew this new digital world and spend more money or give in to my innate cheapskate, get the album digitally and save the $5.

Eventually, I chose digital.

It was the first digital music I ever bought, and I listened to it always, over and over again. I transferred it to my new mp3 player, another new bit of technology that I had just discovered.

It opened a whole new world of digital media, and despite my going kicking and screaming into each new thing, I still went.

Eventually. 

50-28 – Like a Birthday or a Pretty View

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High school was a time for friends and music and concerts. I still feel the ramifications of standing too close to a speaker in a closed building listening to The Stray Cats. Now that was an experience and an amazing memory.

There was Berlin, the Thompson Twins and others, but none more important to my life as the five Brits known (and still known) as Duran Duran. Named for Doctor Duran in Barbarella. With their hair and their makeup, their synth pop. The three unrelated Taylors, Nick Rhodes, and Simon LeBon creating music that was danceable and singable, but also moving and inspirational, a creative catalyst for my writing and exploring what was barely in my mind’s eye, but that wanted to come out in ways.

My friends and I would go to the park, climb up on the big stage at the amphitheatre. They would play their air instruments, and I would take their pictures using my air camera.

Click, whirr is the sound a camera makes, and I was the paparazzi following them on tour.

We were 100 Club, and we opened for Duran Duran. We wrote creative fiction, not song fic, maybe closer to fan fiction. Mine was a murder mystery – Murder at the Odeon. and it was my second moment of fandom and writing colliding.

Duran Duran also contributed to our creativity with their videos – The Chauffer, Night Boat. Their videos told stories that encouraged us to tell our own stories.

My current text notification is Late Bar, one of my favorite songs from them, conjuring up holes in walls, drinking, and mystey. It influenced a poem I wrote for the yearbook called Spies, which in turn encouraged a new Dungeons and Dragons game that was called Top Secret that was role playing for secret agents and government spies.

Their Hungry Like the Wolf was very much like Indiana Jones and New Moon on Monday reminded me of those undercover agents sneaking around foreign lands.

Thirty odd years later and I still listen to them. They remind me of high school, and college but they also fill me with new bouts of creativity and writing inspiration.

When Doves Cry

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Prince died earlier this afternoon. I took a peek at my Facebook while my daughter was getting her hair styled as a special treat. My friend on FB who I trust with these kinds of things mentioned Prince. I denied. Big time. No, that’s not true, I thought. I hit my browser and there was a TMZ link and then CNN. With CNN and ABC7 it was confirmed for me and I told the people around me.

To say we were in shock and more denial would be an understatement.

I remembered Prince being ill last week and making an emergency landing to go to the hospital, but he was fine. He was fine.

And then I remembered 1984. I graduated from high school. I got my driver’s license. I was a freshman in college. It was a pivotal year.

That was the year my friends and I went to see Purple Rain. A music movie was a big deal and Prince was new to me. In retrospect the movie wasn’t as great as I remembered it as a teen, but it was something unique and different, words that would come to define Prince as he became indefinable. He was inspirational. He was creative. His difference was permission to us to free ourselves and be ourselves.

I played that cassette of Purple Rain every time I got into my car. I think I wore out the tape. The only musician I played more than Prince was Duran Duran.

At the end of 1999, we were embroiled in the panic of Y2K. I had friends who had to work in case something happened overnight when the year changed. We had bottled water, and pigs in blankets. We had a two year old and we spent the New Year with my parents just in case the bridges would be out, at least the toll ones. Nothing unexpected happened. Probably because we were prepared. We played Prince’s Party Like it’s 1999 over and over. It was on television and the radio, and it was the perfect anthem to our evening.

When he changed his name to a symbol, it was a bit odd, but it was Prince and that was okay. He redefined what it meant to be innovative, a musician, an entertainer, and how to do things his way.

I saw his picture recently online. I think it was his passport photo. He had a huge afro. I had never seen him with an afro. In my times, he had his hair slicked and combed or coiffed to perfection. I remember thinking that he was going for a new look. I hadn’t realized that this was an old look for him, but I did notice that it suited him. He wore everything well.

Instead of links to obituaries and causes of death (which are still unknown at this time), I’ve decided to share with you four videos that speak to me of Prince.

The first two are two of my favorite songs. They are not performed by Prince, but he wrote them. He wrote many songs for many performers and kept himself in the background, letting them do their thing.

Nobody Compares 2 You – Sinead O’Connor:

Manic Monday – The Bangles:

Prince’s 2007 Super Bowl Halftime Show in the pouring rain. It was as if he orchestrated it himself.

His mystifying and spectacular guitar solo in tribute to George Harrison in the performance for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. While My Guitar Gently Weeps:

I’ve seen three tags today and I share them with you as an epigraph:

Rest in Peace.
Rest in Power.
Rest in Purple.

Rest and be blessed, Prince. You are home, and you will surely be missed for time to come.

Write (Non-Stop)

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How do you write
like you’re Running out of time?
Write day and night
like you’re Running out of time?

…

How do you write like tomorrow won’t arrive?
How do you write like you need it to survive?
How do you write ev’ry second you’re alive?
Ev’ry second you’re alive?
Ev’ry second you’re alive?

– Lin-Manuel Miranda
From the Broadway musical, Hamilton