I've finally settled on what should be engraved on my headstone.
In my 30's I couldn't write fiction and listen to music, so I didn't play my records except occasionally, like when I struggled to keep depression at bay. (I have some vague memory of 2 year old D. exclaiming, "Al Jahbay, Mommy, Al Jahbay!!!" as she danced to Al Jarreau, who as I write this is sittin' on the dock of the bay. Now in my 60's always aware that I will not much longer have ears to hear and eyes to see am slowly playing this deliberate and inherited collection before I will it to a friend. It is the way to peace these days.
It is a paradox that life has gotten simultaneously better and harder. I've always been a bit of a dreadnik but really, it seems like most personal news are tales of loss, damage, diminution and struggle. I'm having to call on more skills to cope with it because if I don't I will not have a stomach left by year's end. Music -- live and recorded -- helps a lot because it takes me back and away and opens me up to commune with a place beyond words and rational thought. Now playing, Norman Connors' Love From the Sun.
Trigger warning :-}
In January I will be taking 2 classes because I'd been subtly warned that there's a sell-by date to getting my degree and you ain't getting any younger ..... I may be crazy by May. (Editor's note: make that crazier) and I doubt I will be posting much although godknows there will be plenty plenty to write about.
I wish us all luck. And solitude.
More than anything it's solitude I want. I've learned in the past few weeks that it is the destination at the end of a causeway -- the road to Galveston -- and music will get me there. I told someone after the election that now was the time to fall in line with art again. Advice I've been taking my own damn self. I own a wonderful record collection. It's a combination of what I bought in my 20's when not only was I part of an innovative music programming organization at the University of Iowa, but as 20-ish people do letting musicians tell me (and others) who I was. Then I inherited a friend's classical collection when she retired and
then I got older, had a baby and fell into the abyss of dire poverty with
seat-of-the-pants moves, and could no longer buy records. Lastly, my
boyfriend-not-yet-husband's hometown room-mate who DJ'd when he wasn't being a
neurotic asshole moved out and left his collection behind. (Which is why
I own the music of Joan Jett, Béla Bartók, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Donna Summer.)
In my 30's I couldn't write fiction and listen to music, so I didn't play my records except occasionally, like when I struggled to keep depression at bay. (I have some vague memory of 2 year old D. exclaiming, "Al Jahbay, Mommy, Al Jahbay!!!" as she danced to Al Jarreau, who as I write this is sittin' on the dock of the bay. Now in my 60's always aware that I will not much longer have ears to hear and eyes to see am slowly playing this deliberate and inherited collection before I will it to a friend. It is the way to peace these days.
It is a paradox that life has gotten simultaneously better and harder. I've always been a bit of a dreadnik but really, it seems like most personal news are tales of loss, damage, diminution and struggle. I'm having to call on more skills to cope with it because if I don't I will not have a stomach left by year's end. Music -- live and recorded -- helps a lot because it takes me back and away and opens me up to commune with a place beyond words and rational thought. Now playing, Norman Connors' Love From the Sun.
Trigger warning :-}
In January I will be taking 2 classes because I'd been subtly warned that there's a sell-by date to getting my degree and you ain't getting any younger ..... I may be crazy by May. (Editor's note: make that crazier) and I doubt I will be posting much although godknows there will be plenty plenty to write about.
I wish us all luck. And solitude.
No comments:
Post a Comment