The cue: I've been listening in the car to a mixtape that my Ph.D. daughter made for me when she was still an undergrad. (Yes, it's a CD, but whatever form they take, I will always call them mixtapes, just as in my heart, Pluto will always be a planet.) A song came on that I don't remember hearing before, and with the first line, tears sprang out of nowhere, flowed, dripped off my cheeks onto my blouse.
"She's got a baby inside."
It's Colbie Caillat's song "Capri," and it made me cry because my daughter, she's got a baby inside.
She might have known the young man who became her husband back when she made this tape, but it would be years — graduation, a move, several jobs — before they'd reconnect and start dating. I thought about the girl who was moved enough by this song to put it on a CD for me. Did she think about the baby she might have someday?
I have said before that I think music might be the highest art form, because of its power to cause intellectual, emotional and physical responses. Why did five words of a song I don't remember ever hearing open the crying place within me? I can't fully articulate that, and I'm not going to try. But that is one thing about music that I am thankful for.
I'm also amazed by its ability to pinpoint time and geography in a life. A number of songs take me back to Liz and Mark's house in grad school days in Pittsburgh, when we'd gather for potlucks and singalongs. The Band's "The Weight," Gary P. Nunn's "London Homesick Blues," Van Morrison's "Moondance" — all of those take me back to that large-windowed, bookshelf-lined home where one or another of the guys with guitars would sing those. Almost any Blood, Sweat & Tears classic puts me under the stars at Wheeling Park's amphitheather, where my parents took me to the first concert I can remember. Simply hearing someone say "pepper and salt" instead of "salt and pepper" puts "Pepper, pepper, pepper, salt" into my mental iPod, which takes me back to a Sharon, Lois & Bram concert on a sunny afternoon at the amphitheater in downtown Little Rock. Some songs call up flashbacks to high school, college, a relationship, a breakup. Some sound like they're still coming out of that radio Mom kept in the kitchen.
I'm also in awe of music's ability to stick in memory. It is arguably the most evanescent art form — you can hear only the note being played or syllable being sung, and each passes into the past as the next comes along — yet it is the most enduring in memory. This mixtape begins with the soundtrack from The Big Chill, and for a lot of those songs, I need to hear only a few notes to know exactly where it's going, where the bass line comes in, where the drums get assertive. I could play air piano. For some of those songs, I can sing every word.
I can't memorize what I've read like that. Words alone don't stick like that.
I was thinking earlier this week that I am grateful that in fifth grade, when band was starting and I came home and said I wanted to play the drums, Mom said oh, but then I wouldn't get to play the melody, only the beat. I wouldn't be able to carry a tune. So I tried out the various instruments, and chose the flute. More than 40 years later, I'm still playing, though more often it's an Irish pennywhistle. Every day.
So, to distill, I am glad for:
• Music's ability to move mind and heart and body.
• Music's waypoint detector.
• Music's persistence in memory.
• Music's communal aspect, the joy of making it together, whether it is playing with my Irish traditional music peeps or singing on Sunday mornings. And everyone I've ever made music with, and especially those I still make music with. And that baby inside, whom I will get to sing to once he is outside.
• This mixtape. And the repeat button.
Where was the music in your day?
Hi nice readiing your post
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