music

I know I said I’d blog about music, but I don’t feel like it.  I’m not sure why I even thought it would be a good idea yesterday.  Recipes?  Yes.  My children?  Yes.  Writing?  Sort of/sometimes.  My excellent husband?  Yes.

Music?  Are you kidding me!  I don’t know ANYTHING about modern day music.  All I know is if I like it, or if I want to turn it off. 

So what is music to me? 

We had all the Beatles records when we were little. We had the black and white pictures from the white album stuck on the wall over the arched doorway in the Hayfork house.  Jenny was going to marry Paul,(even though he was walking barefoot on the crosswalk and EVERYBODY knew that that meant he was dead.) Suzanne was going to marry John, I was going to marry George and Becky was going to marry Ringo.  We had it all worked out.  We knew all the words to all the songs and when ever we got a new record we’d play it over and over and over singing our heads off and dancing until we had no more breath in our lungs.  I remember this crazy (and what I thought was an incredibly risque) dance I made up for Why Don’t We Do It In The Road. I thought he was talking about being on a long road trip and needing to go to the bathroom and there aren’t any bathrooms about so he trying to talk his companion into doing the practical thing. 

As an adult, I realize that perhaps my interpretation was a little flawed.  I remember one old boyfriend being in fits of laughter, because I thought that the words to this one particular Beatles song was, “And Elaine is in my ears and in my eyes...” I thought it was a love song.  Apparently not.  It was quite a crushing blow as “Elaine” was one of my very favorite love songs the Beatles ever did.  And then to find out at the sorry age of 28 that it is just a dumb old street they are singing so soft and soulfully about.  Embarrassing.

Mama taught us quite a few songs from the Gilbert & Sullivan operas.  That was fun.  I liked singing the part of The Lord High Executioner.  I felt proud that I could sing so low and fearsome.  “And I GNASHED my teeth and I DREW from my sheath, my-hi...snickersneeee.  My snickerseee.” (A loud wicked rolling laugh here.) “Ohho, never shall I forget the cry or the shriek that shrieked he.  As I gnashed my teeth and from my sheath I drew my snickersnee.” Then I’d leap in to help with the harmonies of the girls parts, singing about “This naughty youth, he speaks the truth...” etc.  Fun, fun fun!  Every family should have the chance to partake in a little Gilbert & Sullivan every now and then.

Many of my music memories are all tied up with people.  My little sister, Becky for instance.  When Becky would fall in love with a band or a new record (or in the later years a CD) She would play it over and over and over until it would permeate the walls and the clothes and all the memories of that time.  And when I hear certain songs, all these memories of her and me and my children when they were young come flooding back.

Obviously, I listened to a lot of classical music as a ballet crazed teenager. 

I was in one relationship where there was music all the time.  Beautiful lyrical music, classical music, the Smiths, the Proclaimers, Tom Waites, Irish men who howled out songs with enormous vigor and enthusiasm that sometimes bordered on sounding perhaps a tad like a howling drunken brawl, there was Leonard Cohen (although Becky was the one who first introduced me to Leonard,) And Van Morrison, and a million more.  And then, that relationship was over.  The music lingered for a while, until the tapes got snarled and the CD’s went astray and my house was left quiet more often than not. 

And just when it was starting to seem too quiet, Emily stepped into the gap.  Her music filling the house like an exotic perfume, this sharing of the sounds that spoke to her.  And that is one of the things I miss so much with her being grown and gone.  Not hearing the day to day music that surrounds her.  I don’t like this IPod invention.  Everybody walking around with these things stuck in their ears. 

I miss the sharing of strangers music, on the street corners, the bus stops, the subways.  It used to be that as I walked, different neighbourhoods would have different flavors, beats, pumping, undulating out of gigantic boomboxes.  People’s arms, legs, feet, moving, shuffling, keeping the beat.  I miss that now.  Cities seem to have lost some of their flavor.  I don’t know what anybody is listening to.

I could go on and on I imagine.  But I ought to do a bit more on the edit of Try And Stop Me, so I’d better sign off.  I just wanted to say that the reason this whole music thing came up was I was planning on talking about the slight panic that I feel when someone asks what kind of music I like.  (That happened at the Northern Voice Conference as well) I feel like there is a wrong answer and a right one.  A geeky-know-nothing answer and a cool one.  And honestly, I don’t know much about music.  I know people who do.  I know I like listening to the music they like to listen to, and I love it when they mix CD’s for me.  Because not only do I get to listen to good music, but I also get the added pleasure of feeling close to them, knowing that these are songs that bring memories and feelings to them as well. 

Although...I have to say, I love my husband and although he is everything that is perfect and kind...I don’t really like the same music as him.  His music taste is very testosterone driven with guitars doing tricky rifts.  At first it startled me, but now I’m used to it. 

Anyway, the whole reason I was going to talk about music yesterday, was because I got an email from my sister Suzanne and she said she was sending me a mixed CD and it made me feel really happy, because we’ve been separated for so long and I have no idea what kind of music fills her heart and she is sending me some.  How lovely is that.

Posted by Meg Tilly on Monday, February 25, 2008 in Chewing the Fat

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