The Golden Record Project

I’ve always loved music because of its ability to express the wide range of emotions that is the human experience. But when I was a teenager I was also obsessed with the popularity aspect of pop music. I spent hours studying Billboard’s Top 40 to see where my favorite songs landed and couldn’t wait to find out if they would be awarded a Grammy. I grew out of my fixation on which songs earned the most honors, but recently my interest in choosing the best of the best was rekindled. It all started when I learned about the Golden Record Project.

Created by NASA in 1977, the Project indeed had an out-of-this-world goal: producing a collection of recordings to send into space with the Voyager rocket ship. According to NASA, “the records contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or for future humans, who may find them.”

What a fantastic idea! Since Voyager’s goal was to explore the universe, it was exciting to think about who or what might someday hear the unique sounds created by Earthlings. Great minds like Carl Sagan supported the Project, describing it as “the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean, [which] says something very hopeful about life on this planet.” And the best part about the Project? Of all the cultural artifacts that NASA planners could have chosen, it was music that they thought could best explain us to the universe.

Twenty-seven recordings were included in the Project. Some of them, like Beethoven and Bach, I expected to make the cut. Others were less familiar, but exciting to imagine: night chants by Navajo Indians, panpipes and drums from Peru, Aborigine songs from the land down under. But NASA didn’t forget American popular music. Among the sounds ETs can hear are songs by Louie Armstrong, Blind Willie Johnson, and a little number you might know by Chuck Berry, “Johnny B. Goode.”

Once I learned about the Project’s lofty goals, my imagination took off. What if NASA was looking for one human being to share their love of music with the heavens? What if I was lucky enough to be that person? What songs would end up on my Golden Record? I thought about going the traditional “Top Ten Songs of My Life,” but that idea seemed overdone and too limiting after 60+ years of loving music. I ended up approaching the Project like I’ve written these music blogs over the past few years, by honoring the songs that express what it has meant for me to live fully on this planet. Here’s my list:

“I Can Only Be Me” Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder - I CAN ONLY BE ME (Unreleased) - YouTube

I start with this song, which is about loving ourselves as we are, because I had a particularly tough time accepting myself as gay, largely due to my self-doubt and self-deprecation. But finally coming out was not only the hardest thing I’ve done, it was also the most fulfilling. It took me awhile and thankfully singers like Stevie Wonder offered me sage advice:

“How many times have you wished you were some other,
someone than who you are
Yet who's to say if all were uncovered
You will like what you see
You can only be you
As I can only be me…”

“New World Coming” Mama Cass

New World Coming - YouTube

Being an optimist has been the anecdote for the troubles I’ve had accepting myself. As bad as things felt at certain points in my life, I’ve always believed they’d get better. I was lucky to have the optimistic music of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s to show me what happiness looks like, including my favorite “things are looking up” song, by Mama Cass.

“Yes a new world's coming
the one we've had visions of
Coming in peace, coming in joy,
coming in love…”

“He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” Neil Diamond

He Ain't Heavy...He's My Brother - YouTube

The ‘60s also gave me lots of messages about respecting others, helping those in need and living life in peace. I memorized the words of those songs, believing in their message with all my heart, referring to them as My Ten Commandments. There were many songs that awakened my social consciousness, but I am choosing “He Ain’t Heavy” because it was the first one in which I remember being aware that I could make a difference. Sitting on my bedroom floor, listening to these words over and over, I made a pledge to follow wherever they’d take me:

“The road is long
with many a winding turn
that leads us to who knows where
who knows when

But I'm strong
strong enough to carry him
He ain't heavy, he's my brother...”

“The Caterpillar & The Butterfly” Rosalie Sorrels
(sorry I could not find this song on YouTube)

Of all the experiences I’ve been allowed, becoming a father is the greatest. To have had the opportunity to bring life into this world twice and to help my daughter and son grow has been a blessing. It’s also been challenging and confusing. My favorite song about the mysteries of parenthood comes from folksinger Rosalie Sorrels, who tells the dilemma many feel when trying to be the best possible parent (the caterpillar) while also wanting freedom to achieve great things in the world (the butterfly).

“So I the caterpillar will keep working at my trade
and I won’t know what I’m weaving until I’ve got it made
And if I don’t believe in butterflies, I can tell you this:
We all must do what we must do
simply to exist…”

“Nature Boy” Nat King Cole

(29) Nature Boy - YouTube

I was lucky to have grown up a on country road, where I was free to explore nature without the distractions of a busy world. Early on, I learned the healing powers of nature and have returned to its peace countless times. Nature is always the answer to my most troubling questions, which is why I love this Nat King Cole song about meeting someone who explains the biggest question in life:

“…And then one magic day
he passed my way
and while we spoke of many things
fools and kings
this he said to me

The greatest thing you'll ever learn
is just to love and be loved in return…”

Since this is my last blog on the powers of pop music I invite you to share your Golden Record Project songs. What music in your life deserves to be heard by others in this world and beyond?

"I Wanna Know What Love Is" Foreigner

I’m a big fan of songs with a big chorus. You know, the ones that sound and feel like rallying cries for love or social change or our dreams to come true. The stories those songs tell are important, of course, but it’s their choruses—especially the ones sung by a full choir of voices—that inspire me to sing along. At the top of my lungs.

Singing those big choruses always feels like I’m part of something bigger than myself. My earliest memory of that feeling came in 1969 with “Give Peace a Chance,” when, as a fourteen-year-old, I decided to join John & Yoko in choosing love over war. The next year, Diana Ross’s version of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” made me believe that even a kid like me could conquer my doubts and fears. Those big songs kept coming, each rousing chorus inspiring me: Queen’s “We Are the Champions,” in 1977; “We Are the World,” in 1985. But my all-time favorite big chorus comes in the song “I Wanna Know What Love Is.”

I wasn’t a Foreigner fan back in 1984, when they first belted out that song’s larger-than-life chorus. The group seemed like just another hard-rock-flirting-with-pop-music band, with big hits that were about what everybody else was selling: finding, losing or winning back somebody to love. With song titles like “Waiting For a Girl Like You,” “Hot-Blooded,” and “Urgent,” one might assume “I Wanna Know What Love Is,” was just more of the same for Foreigner. But after one listen, I knew these guys were singing about something more important than a latest crush. Take a listen.

Maybe you could interpret “I Wanna Know” as the search for romantic love, but that’s not what it sounded like to me. Who starts a love song out like this:

“I gotta take a little time
a little time to think things over
I better read between the lines
in case I need it when I'm older
Now this mountain I must climb
feels like a world upon my shoulders…”

Something told me—no, it was more of a feeling—that Foreigner’s lead singer, Lou Gramm, was facing mountains for more than a girlfriend. By the time I heard this anthem I was already well aware that a song’s lyrics can be interpreted more than one way. Like back in 1977, when Debby Boone had a massive hit with “You Light Up My Life.” If you were listening to pop radio back then, when Debby’s version of the song got stuck at number one for ten weeks, the song is permanently lodged in your brain—whether you like it or not. But Debby shocked the world when she revealed that she wasn’t singing to some guy. It was God, she claimed, who lit up her life.

I had troubling believing Debby’s interpretation of her hit song, mostly because it was featured in a romantic-comedy of the same name. After seeing a girl and guy fall in love on the big screen while the song played, I just couldn’t imagine it as a musical prayer.

Thankfully, I didn’t make the same mistake with Foreigner. From the day MTV started, I decided not to watch music videos, preferring to let my imagination interpret new music. So I had no idea how the band chose to dramatize “I Wanna Know What Love Is” and I had no problem believing that Foreigner could be singing these words to Someone Greater:

“I wanna know what love is
I want you to show me
I wanna feel what love is
I know you can show me…”

Those words from the chorus, which were repeated after more lyrics about heartache and pain, was powerful in itself, but Foreigner did something to make it extraordinary. With each chorus, their song builds in intensity. After Gramm first reaches for the stars, he’s joined in the next chorus by the New Jersey Mass Choir, a Christian gospel group. That’s weird, I thought, when I found out a religious group was backing a rock band. Isn’t that sacrilegious?

Foreigner’s songwriter Mick Jones satisfied my curiosity when I read an interview in which he explained what he had in mind for this song. Knowing he wanted a choir for his chorus, he struck gold with the New Jersey group. “We did a few takes and it was good,” Jones recalled, “but it was still a bit tentative. So [the choir] got round in a circle, held hands and said The Lord’s Prayer and it seemed to inspire them, because after that they did it in one take.”

But Jones wasn’t finished with the group’s powerful chorus. For the song’s finale, he brought in Jennifer Holiday, a powerhouse vocalist who’d become a star in the Broadway musical Dreamgirls. Holiday added an explosive ending, taking the deep meaning of the song to new heights. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of listening to “I Wanna Know What Love Is.”

And I’ll never get tired of hearing new interpretations of sweet and innocent pop songs. It happened again this past spring, when we were all trying to get used to staying at home. One of the things that felt particularly lonesome to me was the thought on not hearing live music. When might I again be lifted up by a chorus of voices? Then a friend sent me this link.

There it was again, that tricky word Love and all the mixed messages we can hear in it. But listening to all those voices singing about it left me with no doubt what kind of love we need right now. Watching those voices united on my computer, I just had to sing along.

"A Place in the Sun" Stevie Wonder

If you’re lucky, you have a place where you feel completely comfortable, where you’re free to be exactly who you are. Some people find that place in their own home; for others, it’s a shade tree in their neighborhood park or a beach on the ocean. It doesn’t really matter where this place exists as long as you’ve found it. I feel especially lucky because I found my place when I was just a kid—eight years old, to be exact, when I spent my first summer at Camp Hollis.

Established on the shores of Lake Ontario in the town of Oswego, Camp Hollis has served children in Oswego County since 1946 and I’ve spent the last two years writing a book about its history. I’ll publish the book next year, when the camp celebrates its 75th year of providing boys and girls fun in the sun. It’s been a pleasure to write about Camp Hollis, especially since I’m honoring my special place, my “Place in the Sun.”

You may not be familiar with Stevie Wonder’s song “A Place in the Sun.” When he recorded it in 1966, it didn’t spend much time on the music charts. Maybe that’s because the song wasn’t particularly flashy and didn’t come with a killer chorus, but Stevie was saying something important when he sang it. Take a listen.

Wonder was 16 years old when Motown, his record company, released “A Place in the Sun.” He was just shedding his “Little Stevie Wonder” image that made him a star, but no one could have predicted the groundbreaking music—most of it self-composed—he would soon be creating. But even in his youth, when others supplied the songs he recorded, Stevie often had a message to share. He had an unlikely hit with Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” deepening the song’s meaning when sung by a Black teenager. Motown’s in-house composers gave him “Heaven Help Us All,” a song about our country’s failing social conditions, and Stevie’s impassioned singing asked us to pray for soldiers dying in war and drug addicts dying in the streets.

With the same yearning in his voice, Stevie sang “A Place in the Sun.” Using nature as a metaphor for hope, he addressed the social and cultural problems erupting in the 1960s.

“Like a long lonely stream
I keep runnin' towards a dream,
movin' on, movin' on.

Like a branch on a tree
I keep reachin' to be free,
movin' on, movin' on...”

I first heard “A Place in the Sun” around the time I first attended Camp Hollis, but I didn’t associate the fun I had there with Stevie’s hopeful place; it was as an adult that I connected those dots. But something about the feeling I got from the song reminded me of camp. After all, Hollis was the place where I felt free and began to believe in myself. I often refer to the camp as “the place where I hit the only homerun of my life” and that’s true. I was an uncoordinated kid and terrible at sports, but the counselors at Hollis didn’t know that about me and they gave me the same chance to succeed that they gave every kid under their care. I also made self-discoveries in arts & crafts and on nature trails. And I made lots of friends, making my camp experience one of the thousands of success stories Camp Hollis claims.

I got extra lucky with Hollis, ending up on its summer staff during my college years. As a 19-year-old, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but after a few summers at the camp, where I worked alongside others who had chosen careers in teaching or social work, I decided I wanted to help people. By my junior year, I’d switched my college major to education.

While I enjoyed the challenges of teaching—I taught for seven years right out of college—I often found myself nostalgic about my place in the sun. Imagine my excitement in 1989, when I learned that Camp Hollis now had a fulltime position which oversaw the camp, and that the job was currently open. For the next 21 years, my place in the sun was my main responsibility, which gave me lots of opportunities to meet others who considered the camp their special place.

When the time came for me to retire from that job, I knew I wasn’t ready to fully let Camp Hollis go. Fortunately, along with the camp being a great place for children and adults, Hollis is also a beautiful place. Overlooking Lake Ontario, with its incredible sunsets, the camp has inspired staff members and volunteers to create a series of gardens and it’s now my pleasure to take care of them. Nowadays I stop by the camp once a week during the growing season to water and pull weeds. While doing so I listen to the sounds of happy children, many who are finding, for the first time, their place in the sun.

Though the camp program only runs for eight weeks each summer, it has a way of staying in the hearts of anyone who’s enjoyed their time there. Through the other three seasons, when the weather or life’s challenges can get me down, I reflect on the camp. Which brings me to my favorite part of “A Place in the Sun.” It comes at the end of the song, when Stevie offers one more reason why it’s important to find your special place. I like to sing it just like Stevie does, loud and confidently:

“You know when times are bad
and you're feeling sad
I want you to always remember
Yes, there's a place in the sun…”

"America" Simon & Garfunkel

Has there ever been a better song to accompany us as we embark on a life-changing journey than Simon & Garfunkel’s “America”? When Paul Simon wrote it and he and Art Garfunkel harmonized to it in 1968, I’m not sure what sort of pilgrimage Simon was singing about, but ten years later, when I boarded a bus that would transport me to a new life, his musical message of “America” was urging me on.

Before I tell my story, take a listen to the song and notice how Simon chose to start it: “America” By first humming and strumming its melody, Paul creates a comforting feeling—I’d call it meditative—which makes “America” a perfect soundtrack for someone more than a little nervous about heading off into the unknown.

I’ve never been much of a traveler. We didn’t go on a lot of road trips when I was a kid, but even as an adult I’ve always preferred the familiarity of my home. Despite that, something within me has always recognized when stepping out of my comfort zone is worth the risk. Like spring 1978, when, as a new college graduate, I was itching to find a school that would welcome my unconventional teaching philosophies. I found just such a place in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, 180 miles south of my hometown.

The Williamsport school was founded on principles I believe in. It provides an ungraded, child-centered educational environment that encourages its students, parents and teachers to learn at their own pace. I had lots of ideas of how I thought children learned best, so when I heard about the school and found out they were hiring, I jumped at the chance. But when the call came with an offer to interview, I wondered if I had jumped too far. I was 22 years old and had never been beyond my New York state borders.

My potential move might have been too scary to seriously consider if something beyond an innovative school wasn’t also nudging me to make a change. Along with not having seen the world, I also hadn’t seen all I could be. People knew me as the boy my parents raised who was voted class clown by his school friends. Like many who have longed to discover all that they are, I decided I needed to go somewhere else to find myself. Though Paul Simon shares his hopes with a girlfriend in “America,” it felt like he was singing for me:

“Kathy, I said, as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
Michigan seems like a dream to me now
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've come to look for America...”

Looking for America. Isn’t that one of the great things about our country? How we’re free to travel wherever we want, giving us plenty of room to figure out life. That freedom has inspired generations of Americans, and though it may have appeared that those seekers were heading off to dig for gold or claim a plot of land, in reality they were searching for themselves. Simon refers to this truth later in the song, again confiding in his girlfriend:

“Kathy, I'm lost, I said,
though I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching
and I don't know why...”

With those words—empty and aching—Simon captures the challenge each of us face as we enter adulthood. Even when our parents and teachers have provided us with what we need to launch an independent life, we can only fully achieve it by stepping out on our own. I knew I had potential beyond being a funny friend and I believed that I could improve the lives of children, but I hadn’t yet left my comfortable world and tried. Something suggested that maybe I could find clues of who I was in Williamsport.

I was right. The parents of that school were welcoming, and by sharing their life stories they gave me ideas of how I might live mine. The teachers were working with educational philosophies I had only studied in college, modeling how to practice what I preached. The students were bright and engaged in their learning, inspiring me to do likewise. When I returned home after the interview and two weeks later got a call inviting me to teach at the school, I didn’t hesitate to accept the offer.

During the seven years I taught in Williamsport I made lots of trips back and forth between that city and my hometown. Shortly after moving there I acquired a Toyota Corolla, its four-cylinder engine working overtime to carry me back and forth between my new home in the Pennsylvania mountains and my past in Upstate New York. There was always music on those road trips and almost all of them included a listen to Simon & Garfunkel’s “America.” With each excursion, singing its chorus felt like my life was a little more attainable.

“All come to look for America
All come to look for America…”

Though I often saw myself as different growing up, I began to understand how much I had in common with everyone who’s ever embarked on a journey. Yes, moving to Williamsport was almost too far out of my comfort zone, but with Paul Simon as my role model, I found within me the courage to take the chance.

How Neil Diamond Rescued a Lonely Boy

I’ve been a Neil Diamond fan for a long time. He was one of the first singers I recognized on the radio because it was easy to tell his songs from everyone else’s. Neil’s vocal style is a cross between carrying a tune and carrying a conversation, and it was his talking that I liked best. I spent a lot of time alone in my childhood bedroom listening to music, so having someone like Neil share his thoughts with me was comforting.

Perhaps you’re wondering if I’m writing about the same Neil Diamond that you’re familiar with, the superstar whose biggest hits were singalongs like “Sweet Caroline,” toetappers like “Cracklin’ Rosie,” and ballads like “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers.” Those classics are the ones you’ll hear on today’s oldies station, but it’s songs from early in his career that make me think Neil Diamond was, like me, a lonely boy.

You can hear hints of Neil’s solitary childhood in his first attempts at songwriting—he was composing hits for others before we ever got to hear his voice. Here are his opening lyrics from The Monkees’ smash, “I’m a Believer.” The song has a happy ending, but Neil starts it with this more somber philosophy:

“I thought love was only true in fairy tales
meant for someone else but not for me
Love was out to get me
that's the way it seemed
Disappointment haunted all of my dreams…”

During an interview after gaining fame, Neil said he felt a lot of pressure trying to write those radio-friendly hits for others. Pop music in the early 1960s was almost exclusively about falling in love, but Neil had other concerns on his mind. The memories of his youth, when his New York City family was often in poverty, were waiting to be expressed, so he decided to ignore the pressure of only writing about romance. And to ensure his biographical songs rang true, Neil sang them himself.

When he made his decision to transition to a singing career, later in the ‘60s, I was heading into my teens and just emerging from my lonely childhood. Though it didn’t make a splash on the music charts, one of Neil’s first recordings, “Brooklyn Roads,” introduced me to someone who found New York City as lonesome as my rural upstate New York:

“I built me a castle
with dragons and kings
and I'd ride off with them
as I stood by my window
and looked out on those
Brooklyn Roads…

I'm wonderin'
what's come of them
Does some other young boy
come home to my room
does he dream what I did…”

After a few of his reflective songs went nowhere on the charts, Neil had a little success with the song “Shiloh.” “Shiloh” had a catchy tune that helped its chances of being heard on the radio, but it was Neil’s words that caught my ear:

“Young child with dreams
dream every dream on your own
When children play
seems like you end up alone

Papa says he'd love to be with you
if he had the time
So you turn on the only friend you can find
there in your mind

Shilo, when I was young
I used to call you name
When no one else would come
Shilo, you always came
and we'd play…”

Just in case people weren’t listening closely to Neil’s personal lyrics, he spelled it out in the title of another early hit, “Solitary Man,” a song about the endless search for companionship. As Neil built his career album by album, many of which I collected, each would include a song or two alluding to his lonely younger years. I memorized them all.

Writing this essay about Neil’s influence has given me a chance to take a closer look at what I mean by the word lonely. Though most people associate loneliness with wanting to be with someone, as a kid I was missing something within me: an understanding of who I am. Without that self-acceptance and without truly knowing myself, it was hard to reach out to others. A lonely place.

It probably won’t come as a surprise to learn that music helped me figure out who I am. Over the years I listened to lots of singers, trying their style of music on for size. Among those that fit just right were rhythm & blues songs, a genre of music with a name that accurately described the intermingling of joy and pain inherent in those records. I liked how I felt as I listened to them and it seems the same was true for Neil Diamond. Along with his thoughtful ballads, he also composed rhythm & blues-inspired songs like “Brother Love’s Travellin’ Salvation Show,” “Soolamon,” and “Walk on Water,” all which featured a gospel choir in full voice, lifting Neil’s singing higher and higher.

Those stirring songs, found on the same Neil Diamond albums I was collecting, sounded like an anecdote to his lonely musings. He was guiding me musically. “Find comfort in the songs you love,” he seemed to be saying. “Find it within yourself.”

I took Neil’s advice to heart, moving my love of music to the piano, where I started recreating my favorite songs at the keyboard, playing them as if they were my own. I dabbled in all kinds of music, including some of Neil’s classics. One that I especially enjoy is also one of his biggest hits, “I Am I Said,” which included yet another reference to our lonely childhoods:

“…but I got an emptiness deep inside
and I've tried
but it won't let me go
And I'm not a man who likes to swear
but I never cared
for the sound of being alone…”

Well said, Neil. Well sang.

"Sunshine On My Shoulders" John Denver

This music blog often focuses on the lyrics of songs that have been life-changing for me. Ever since I started paying attention to pop music, at around 10 years old, I’ve studied the words to my favorite songs, analyzing them to help me make sense of what often seems like a confusing world. I believe that’s why I ended up as a writer, having long appreciated how the right words express exactly what I mean. But a song is more than words, and in order for it to reveal its full message I have to feel its melody. Today’s blog is about a singer who gave us both thoughtful words and enjoyable melodies. It’s also about a friend who showed me how to feel that singer’s music.

John Denver became hugely popular during an era when a guitar and a voice were all you needed to make hit songs. His lyrics were often about the natural world and his homespun melodies welcomed me into that world. John’s singing sounded like I was sitting with a good friend in front of a campfire.

I met one those good friends when I was in college. Like many taking their first steps away from home, I was itching to say goodbye to my youth and become a grownup. It was a time of self-discovery, and because we often learn through observation, I paid close attention to those I chanced to meet on my college campus. That certainly happened when I became friends with Bob.

After attending the same class and getting to know each other at some extracurricular activities, Bob decided I would be a good person to fill a vacant room in the house he and a few of his friends rented. At first, it seemed unlikely that our friendship had potential. Bob was athletic, while I had always thought of myself as uncoordinated and inept at sports. Deep down, though, I longed to experience the joys of being physically active, so when I saw Bob doing just that I knew I’d found the right role model.

It helped that all sports were fair game to Bob and he never played them competitively. He’d head out for a jog or to shoot some hoops simply because it was fun. The fact that he always had a smile on his face wasn’t lost on me, so when he asked if I’d join him for a round of tennis or a swim in the lake, I disregarded my childhood hang-ups and followed him out our apartment door.

Along with his obvious joy for sports, I noticed that Bob loved life in other ways. He seemed to fully embrace every experience. I’d see him first thing in the morning, grabbing an apple from the fridge on the way out to an early class, his smile as broad as his outstretched arms, inviting us all in for a hug. How Bob lived each day was unlike anything I’d ever seen.

Or heard. Bob also appreciated life with every fiber of his being by singing. He’d break out in song whenever he felt like it, his rich baritone filling our world with his favorite songs. More often than not, they would be John Denver tunes. Here’s his favorite:

“Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy
Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry
Sunshine on the water looks so lovely
Sunshine almost always makes me high…”

Much like I’d never thought of myself as an athlete, I never imagined I could sing until I met Bob. Soon he’d coaxed me into harmonizing on John Denver ballads. We’d be out for a jog and he’d break into “Rocky Mountain High.” He’d be cooking dinner and the kitchen would reverberate with “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Once he’d invited me, it felt natural to join in. And it felt good.

Bob and I stayed in touch for a while after college. Though he traveled halfway around the world when he signed up for the Peace Corps, he found a way to be one of the ushers in my wedding. Then, as friends sometimes do, we headed in different directions and years went by with only an occasional letter and an even rarer phone call. One day, out of the blue, Bob contacted me to ask if he could visit, and we spent a weekend talking about old times. When he got ready to leave, he handed me a shopping bag. “I thought you might like this,” he said. It was an album of John Denver’s greatest hits.

Bob’s gift reminded me of our once close friendship and I decided it was important to stay in touch. A few months later I called him to plan for another get together. There was silence when I asked the person answering the phone if I could speak with Bob. Finally, she said, “You better call his family.” It was Bob’s father who told me that my friend had died; he’d taken his own life.

Bob was the first person I’d lost in such an untimely and unexplained manner, and it deeply troubled me. Questions of why my joyous college friend would choose to end his life kept me awake for months. I never got the answers I needed and the hole that was left with his passing remains open, which makes listening to John Denver today a mixed emotion. On one hand, there’s the loss of a friendship that was only beginning to mature. On the other, there is my gratitude for having had a friend who showed me I have every right to feel.

“If I had a day
that I could give to you
I’d give to you
a day just like today
If I had a song that I could sing to you
I’d sing a song to make you feel this way…”

The Remarkable Voice of Karen Carpenter

Here’s a little experiment: Think about a singer or band who has had a lasting impact on you, particularly one you listened to as a kid. What’s it feel like today, as an adult, to hear them singing songs that once seemed to be written only for you? Do they still stir your heart? Do they continue to inspire you? Then, consider this: What if that singer you once idolized is now referred to as “only moderately talented” or “unworthy of legendary status”? Who’s right? You or the critics?

I’ve been pondering those questions after recent listenings to Carpenters: A 25th Anniversary Celebration. I bought the album because I’ve enjoyed Karen Carpenter’s singing ever since she and her brother Richard broke into pop music in 1970. Well-dressed and well-mannered, they were easy to like. It helped that they made good music.

Richard was the duo’s music arranger, keyboardist, occasional songwriter and background singer, but it was Karen’s way with a song’s lyrics that made the Carpenters special. Those of us with our ears glued to the radio back then could hear something in her voice that made their music satisfying beyond typical Top 40 standards. But right from the start, music critics were…well…critical.

They called Karen’s singing sugery sweet, too lightweight to adequately interpret a song’s message; some called her singing childlike. It didn’t matter that, while critics complained, her voice gave us memorable song after memorable song: 16 hits in a little over five years. It didn’t matter that some of those songs came to define milestones in our life. Weddings had “We’ve Only Just Begun.” Parents could offer their children “Sing,” from Sesame Street. Those lucky in love were on the “Top of the World” and those falling out of it were comforted by “Rainy Days and Mondays.” Today their songs still sound good, but back at the start of the 1970s, the Carpenters didn’t sound like anyone else in pop music.

Unlike the 1960s’ electrified guitars and thunderous vocals, Karen and Richard specialized in what was known as Easy Listening music, and, according to critics, those pleasing-to-the-ear songs were at the bottom of the heap in terms of respect. I enjoy reading books about music and when I started researching this blog I looked up the Carpenters in the dozen or so music-related books on my shelf. Only two mention them. In Fire and Rain, author David Browne covers a pivotal year in pop music, 1970, and called the Carpenters “a brother-sister duo from Southern California who looked like student council candidates and made polite music to match.”

The other reference to the Carpenters’ music is found in The Rolling Stone Album Guide, considered the ultimate critique of recorded music released since the beginning of the rock & roll era. The expansive book covers thousands of artists and deems their recordings with a five star rating. The Carpenters rarely earned more than two. I think the reviewer was trying to be kind when he wrote, “Richard Carpenter’s clean-cut arrangements and good-humored ditties were beautifully complemented by his sister Karen’s voice.”

At least that reviewer acknowledged Karen’s vocal abilities, because that’s what I focused on as I prepared to write this blog. After spending time with the Carpenters’ music, I began to see—or, better yet, hear—why I believe there is an enduring quality to their songs. It was something in Karen’s voice, something that went deeper than words.

It was big news when Karen died, in 1983, from complications of anorexia. No one talked about such a disease back then, which made her death something more than a show business tragedy; it became a topic to be reckoned with. Probably the best reporting of Karen’s struggles with the disease can be found in the book, Little Girl Blue, by Randy Schmidt. I’ll leave the discussion on the causes and lack of cure for Karen’s anorexia to others; what I want to share are the forewarnings of her illness that can be heard in her voice.

Karen normally sang as a contralto, but she had the rare ability to transition from that more typical female register to a much lower range—something she called her “basement.” Thanks to Richard’s songwriting and song selection, her basement voice was used masterfully on music that tended toward the melancholy, the “rainy days and Mondays always get me down” type of song.

Richard then carefully chose an instrument to underscore the loneliness in his sister’s voice: the solitary harmonica on “Rainy Days,” a pensive harp in “Superstar,” and the saxophone or piano on several songs. Added to Karen’s voice—always a little mysterious and distant—their songs were perfect for those times when we’re feeling alone or misguided or unlucky in love. Listen to what Karen and a piano created with the opening verse of Solitaire. There are moments like that on just about every song the Carpenters recorded.

Thanks to the Carpenter’s clean-cut image, none of us imagined what Karen’s life was like behind her remarkable voice. When she smiled for the cameras, nobody saw anything troubling. But I can hear it today, which, in my book, makes Karen Carpenter among the best blues singers who ever lived. Like others who specialized in singing about hard times, she didn’t talk about her pain; she expressed it. In doing so, Karen Carpenter somehow made my own troubles a little better.

Staying Home with James Taylor

This blog has always been about honoring the music that I associate with important events in my life. Since I started writing it, a year and a half ago, I’ve shared stories about the singers and songs that have been part of my half century or so of figuring out how I fit in the world. But today’s blog isn’t about a song from my past; it’s about the music I’m listening to today, while we’re all living away from the world.

Just when our shelter-in-place began here in New York State, I received a gift from a dear friend. She hadn’t sent it because of the pandemic; it just happened to arrive as we were all beginning to spend most of our time at home. Because this friend and I share a long history, I always consider a gift from her as meaningful. And that was the case when she sent me this: James Taylor’s latest CD.

James’ new album is called Standards and it’s a collection of tunes from The Great American Songbook, music that was written and first popular nearly a century ago. (It’s interesting that several songs on the CD are from the 1920s, when the United States and the rest of the world were recovering from the 1918 influenza epidemic.) My first thought when I received the CD was that James had sold himself out. It seemed like he’d joined the many singers who’ve decided to forego their own new music by recording an album of old songs. I wondered if James was just trying to make a little money, then I read what he wrote in the album’s liner notes:

“These are songs I have always known. Most of them were part of my family’s record collection, the first music I heard as a kid growing up in North Carolina…Before I started writing my own stuff, I learned to play these tunes, working out chord changes for my favorite melodies. And those guitar arrangements became the basis for this album.”

James’ guitar did make my first listen of Standards enjoyable. To hear him recreating the melodies of “God Bless the Child” and “Ol’ Man River” on guitar welcomed me into this new musical territory for Taylor. But even more precious was his voice, so familiar to me after fifty years that it sounded like a lifelong friend had stopped by for a visit. But this CD hadn’t come to reminisce about the good old days of our high school prom or my summers working at a camp or the birth of my two children. It came to start a new conversation, and after spending so much time at home, James’ CD has become a soundtrack of this unique time we’re all living through. When this pandemic is over, when these days are someday our history, I know that whenever I listen to Standards, I’ll remember the spring of 2020.

Years from now, when I hear James’ version of the comforting ballad “Moon River,” I’ll recall the first time I heard him singing it, sitting in my car outside a grocery store, preparing for the uncomfortable experience of putting on a mask. When I hear James on the fanciful “Pennies From Heaven,” I’ll remember wondering if I’d ever feel happy-go-lucky again. When he sings “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught,” a song about cruel prejudice from the musical South Pacific, I’ll remember that some people tried to politicize this global pandemic. And I’ll never forget the irony of hearing James serenade us with the intimate song “The Nearness of You.”

When I look back on this experience of isolation, I’ll be thankful for how James helped me feel less alone. I used to belong to a group of music lovers who’d gather occasionally to join our voices in song. Some brought instruments to accompany us and we often met at the home of a woman who owned a piano. I was just learning how to interpret my favorite songs on the keyboard and I told her I admired her piano playing. She told me this: “When you learn to play music, you never have to feel alone.”

That’s what receiving the gift of James Taylor means to me. To have his trusted voice fill some of the emptiness of my days with beautiful music is perhaps the greatest gift I could receive right now.

Harry Chapin's Story-Songs

Has there ever been a better storytelling songwriter than Harry Chapin? Sure, every once in a while, a musical saga like Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” or Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” will come along to entertain us, but I never found those stories relatable. Harry, on the other hand, recorded dozens of songs that sounded like full length non-fiction books, and, as a teenager who spent a lot of time wondering what the grown up world was like, his songs gave me a glimpse of the truth that lay ahead. Come to find out, many of Harry’s songs were true.

Take one of his classics, “Mr. Tanner,” for example. It’s the story of a small-town guy with a decent singing voice who decides to give professional music a try. Harry got his idea for the song after reading a newspaper account of just such a man, and his musical version overflows with drama, cleverly weaving Tanner’s rendition of the Christmas carol “Oh Holy Night” into the song. As you might expect, things don’t work out for Tanner, and in the five minutes it took Harry to tell the story, he shared a biography of pain.

It took Chapin twice as long to tell another of his stories, “A Better Place to Be,” which he wrote after visiting an Upstate New York tavern. But he deftly used every one of those ten minutes to create a heartbreaking love story. Here’s how Harry set the scene, in the song’s first stanza:

“It was an early morning bar room
and the place just opened up
And the little man come in so fast
and started at his cup
And the broad who served the whiskey
she was a big old friendly girl
who tried to fight her empty nights
by smilin’ at the world…”

Harry had trouble getting most his songs on the radio because of their length, but he did succeed with “W-O-L-D,” the story of a radio deejay who once interviewed him. Harry must have asked some questions, too, because he used the deejay’s troubled marriage and fear of losing his career to younger music jocks to write another song of regret, which seem to drive the plots of many Chapin classics.

That doesn’t mean that all of Harry’s songs were sad. (Anybody familiar with his classic runaway truck song, “30,000 Pounds of Bananas”?) But his honest look at how hard life can be gave Chapin a strong, devoted following. As one of his admirers, I wanted to know why he adopted the longer, storytelling style of songwriting. I found a clue in Harry’s first career.

Chapin started out as a filmmaker, and, as might be expected, he focused on capturing true-to-life stories, even earning an Academy Award nomination for his documentary about heavyweight boxers, “Legendary Champions.” My guess is that when Harry shifted to the world of music, he brought his passion for storytelling with him.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that a few of Harry’s factual story-songs were about his life. “I Wanna Learn a Love Song,” was the embellished description of how he met with wife, Sandy, an older woman with children. Starring in the song as a young guitarist who makes a little money giving lessons, Chapin meets a married woman who’s looking for more than how to play romantic ballads.

His most famous song, “Taxi,” also has autobiographical roots. Before his success, Harry made ends meet by driving a cab. Around the time he was scrapping together a living making fares, he got word that an old girlfriend, who’d aspired to be an actress, had cashed in her career to marry a rich man. You’d think most of us couldn’t relate to such a story, but Harry had a way of taking a unique circumstance and turning it into something we all could understand:

“You see, she was gonna be an actress
and I was gonna learn to fly
She took off to find the footlights
and I took off to find the sky…

And here she's acting happy
inside her handsome home
And me, I'm flying in my taxi
taking tips, and getting stoned…”

Helping us understand the human experience went beyond Harry’s memorable songs. After achieving success, he turned his attention to world hunger, performing hundreds of charity concerts to raise money for the cause. Then, as only Harry could do, he wrote a song about it: “The Shortest Story.” I’ve avoided giving you links to Chapin songs in this blog, worried that you might not have enough time to give them a listen. (I highly recommend it, though!) But surely you’ve got 2 minutes and 26 seconds: “The Shortest Story”

I never got to see Harry in concert, but I’ve talked with those who have. Thousands gathered to hear their favorite “author” sing his best stories. Several songs were showstoppers, including “All My Life’s a Circle,” a friendly singalong about how life keeps returning us to the places and the people we love. One of the song’s stanzas always got a big reaction from the crowd:

“It seems like I’ve been here before
though I can’t remember when
And I got the funny feeling
that we’ll all be together again…”

Audiences were confident that last line was true, but Harry’s promise was cut short in 1981, when he died in a car crash. He was 38, which makes me wonder how many stories he never got to tell. However, instead of leaving you with the loss of Harry Chapin, here’s something to gain by his inspiring philosophy of life:

“Given this short opportunity we call life, it seems to me that the only sensible way—even if you have pessimistic thoughts about the 99 percent possibility that things are going wrong—is to operate on the one percent chance that our lives mean something.”

Guys Bands, Not Boy Bands

When I was in my teens, guy bands dominated the music scene. They were nothing like the sweet-voiced, air-brushed boy bands popular today. Guys cranking out hits in the ‘60s and ‘70s were…well…more masculine. A couple of my favorites were Gary Puckett & the Union Gap, and the Grass Roots, and for a few years their songs gave young guys tips on what it meant to be a man.

Though I’m a good half-century past my teens, I’ve noticed something about the enduring connection I have to those bands. Every so often I thin out my CD collection because I have this crazy rule that I shouldn’t own more than a hundred at one time. I decide which singers or groups I don’t think I’ll listen to again, but when I come to my Grass Roots or Union Gap CDs, I can’t imagine getting rid of them. There’s something about their music that defines my coming of age.

Those bands and others were role models for lots of us. After seeing the Beatles take over the world, many young boys taught themselves a few guitar chords or how to bang a drum. I took up the piano, which turned out to be uncool for our makeshift bands, but some of the luckier kids got to play at a school dance or two. Dedicated musicians caught a break and became regionally popular, playing their state fairs or opening for a nationally known group. Those with real talent might have drawn attention from a record label looking to launch the next music idol. I imagine that’s what happened for the Grass Roots and Gary’s Union Gap.

To survive in the hit-or-miss music industry, those generic guy bands needed something unique. For Gary Puckett and his boys, their hit song titles made it clear what they were selling: “Young Girl,” “This Girl is a Woman Now,” “Woman, Woman,” Lady Willpower.” Gary’s pop-friendly voice was laced with a touch of soul and he used it to serenade young females anxious to grow up. “Lady Willpower”:

“Did no one ever tell you the facts of life
Well there's so much you have to learn
and I would gladly teach you…”

Those suggestive songs were like instruction manuals for us teens. Other than one watered down lecture in health class, they were how we learned about sex. Hyper-curious about the mating game, it wasn’t uptight science teachers who gave us what we needed; it was song lyrics.

“This girl walked in dreams
playing in a world of her own
This girl was a child
existing in a playground of stone
Then one night her world was changed
Her life and dreams were rearranged
and she would never be the same again…”

Lots of girls took those words to heart, slow dancing to them, melting in their boyfriend’s arms. Though my interest in sex was different than most guys, from my perch on a bench along the gymnasium walls I could feel the seductive energy generated by Gary’s voice.

I was more inclined to hit the dance floor when the deejay switched to the Grass Roots, who offered a whole different message. With songs like “Temptation Eyes,” “Midnight Confessions,” and “Sooner or Later,” the Grass Roots led the pack of guy bands who specialized in high-octane tunes. If you’re not familiar with the Grass Roots, here’s a sample: “Sooner or Later”

There were eight or ten Grass Roots hits just like that one, and all of them had a single purpose: to work up a guy’s fever. Couples were dancing to those songs, too, but so were us solo boys, who used the gym floor as a launching pad, reaching for the ceiling. Reaching for something yet to be discovered.

Unlike the Union Gap’s sentimental lyrics, Grass Roots songs concentrated on the hard work of winning a girlfriend:

“All of the lonely nights, waiting for you to come, longing to hold you tight

But I’d wait a million years, walk a million miles, cry a million tears

I’d swim the deepest sea, just to have you near me…”

Add blaring horns, a pulsating organ and a driving drumbeat, and song after Grass Roots song ignited the testosterone in pubescent boys. Each one would build in intensity and then, finally, with the chorus—which was often just the song title screamed over and over—the tension was released. After achieving what sounded like a musical orgasm to me, the only place for the song to go was the next stanza, where it again built to the chorus.

Deejays who knew their business strung several high intensity songs together, working guys into a frenzy. When the time was right, they’d slip on a slow song and sweaty teens fell into each other’s embrace. Who knows how many babies were conceived after listening to the convincing messages of guy bands.

Somehow, in my own awkward way, I absorbed those powerful songs. They helped me understand who I was. Most days, I don’t think about them much, but every once in a while I need to hear a contemplative Gary Puckett ballad or a Grass Roots rocker. Without fail, they reconnect me to the invincible feelings of my youth. That’s reason enough to hold on to my guy band CDs.

"To The Morning" Dan Fogelberg

When I started this music blog, a year ago, I planned to make “To the Morning” my initial entry. It made sense to launch a blog that honors pop songs with the first one to effectively change my life. But my “To the Morning” story is complicated; it jumps back and forth over 42 years and its influence on me can’t be described as a single lesson. It’s taken me a year to figure out the best way to tell this story, which begins a few years ago, when I was on a journey 2,000 miles from home…

It’s a beautiful morning in Ouray, Colorado, late September 2016. I’m on a three-week retreat in a secluded cabin, finishing a book manuscript. Before each day of writing, I start with a morning walk, taking in the majestic mountains surrounding Ouray. Once the sun makes it way over their Alp-like peaks, it washes the town in golden brilliance. The view is breathtaking; the sort of beauty that makes me want to sing, and for some reason, “To the Morning” comes to mind. Because I haven’t thought of the song in years, I really have to dig to remember its lyrics, until finally, the chorus comes back:

“And it's going to be a day
there is really no way to say no
to the morning

Yes, it's going to be a day
there is really nothing left to say but

come on morning…”

Softly singing as my walk weaves along a mountain stream, I begin to cry. Now, crying isn’t something I easily do—I can’t remember another time when a beautiful landscape has moved me to tears. What’s going on? I wonder. Why do a few lines from a remembered song trigger such strong emotion? Kicking up gravel on the trail, I search for an answer. There’s no hurry; my writing back at the cabin can wait. When something happens as important as a song moving me to tears, I’ve learned to pay attention. I keep walking and let “To the Morning” take me back to the first time I heard it…

It was in Music Appreciation class, freshman year of college, 1974. I’d randomly chosen the class because it had the word music in its title. I had no clue how to choose appropriate classes for my as-yet-undetermined major—hell, I didn’t have a clue who I was. Eighteen years old, my life seemed like an endless series of wrong turns. I was only certain that I couldn’t get enough of music and was curious what a class in appreciation of it would be like.

The class didn’t disappoint me. We were expected, as a final project, to research some form of music that we deemed important. I opted to write an in-depth review of the latest Carole King album. Not very innovative, I know, but someone else in the class took the project to a whole new level.

Diane and I struck up a friendship from the first day of classes, largely due to our interest in the same type of music. So, I didn’t hesitate when she asked me to meet her in the library one evening for a preview of her final project.

When I arrived at the library, Diane waved me over to a study cubicle. On a table were a slide projector, record player and an album, Homefree, by someone named Dan Fogelberg. I wasn’t familiar with his unusual last name, this being just before he’d broken into fame. As I settled in a chair facing a blank wall, Diane darkened the lights and set the record player’s needle on “To the Morning.” Take a listen.

Fogelberg’s piano dreamily set the stage for what Diane had prepared. After a few seconds, she pushed a button on the projector and a photo appeared: the sun breaking over the horizon. At the same moment, Fogelberg’s voice, gentle as his piano, began singing:

“Watching the sun, watching it come,

watching it come up over the rooftops…”

Seconds later, another picture appeared: a hiker heading into the sunrise. A few seconds more, another. Diane had selected dozens of evocative photos to interpret Fogelberg’s poetry, creating, years before MTV upended how we listen to our favorite songs, a music video!

After my introduction to Fogelberg, I added Homefree to my record collection and “To the Morning” became my go-to song for those moments in life when I’m witnessing beauty. Like this day, 42 years after my first listen, tearful on a Colorado morning.

It took more than one walk to figure out the genesis of my tears. As I recalled more of the song’s lyrics, why “Morning” had deeply moved me became clear:

“And maybe there are seasons

and maybe they change

and maybe to love is not so strange.”

Feeling the warm light of an Ouray morning, age 61, that last line catapults me back to my 18-year-old self, sitting in a darkened library room, my comprehension of love also in the dark. Up to that point, everything I’d heard about love—the girl/guy hooking-up kind—I did not understand. But, as I watched the marriage of photographs and music, something stirred in me. Diane had opened a tiny window into the idea of another way to love.

As I matured, I found other examples of love. They were on a quiet path through the woods or in conversation with a friend or how words on a page can make sense of a confused life. Before I left that Ouray cabin I wrote my first observations of the powerful influence from a single song and started a list of other important music, easily coming up with a couple dozen songs that were pivotal for me. From them, this blog was born. Sharing their stories with you continues to inspire me. Thanks for joining me on this journey.

"Haven't Got Time For The Pain" Carly Simon

I can still see myself sitting in that college English class, listening to our teacher’s lecture on the book we were reading, The Scarlett Letter. He was asking us to imagine the suffering of the story’s protagonist, Hester, who was publicly humiliated for bearing a child out of wedlock. “What must that have been like for this woman?” the professor asked. Then, perhaps trying to appeal to his young audience, he added, “Poor Hester could have used the song ‘Haven’t Got Time for the Pain.’”

A few students laughed at our teacher’s joke, but my reaction was one of admiration. Someone with a PhD was acknowledging the value of Top 40 music, comparing a Carly Simon song to a critically-acclaimed novel! I’m sure our teacher didn’t give his reference to “Haven’t Got Time for the Pain” a second thought, but it’s stayed with me all these years, long after I’d sat in his classroom, silently holding in my pain.

I owned a few Carly Simon albums back in 1974, when “Haven’t Got Time” was a hit. I thought of Simon as a good singer with a talent for writing catchy choruses, like the ones in“You’re So Vain” and “Anticipation.” (That last one’s chorus was so infectious it was used in a TV commercial.) Carly often co-wrote songs with Jacob Brackman and while it isn’t clear which of them came up with the lyrics for “Haven’t Got Time,” the song seems to reflect her life in the early ‘70s: newly married to James Taylor, expecting their first child. You can hear the relief in her voice; a troubled, but finally contented, young woman: “Haven’t Got Time For The Pain”

“All those crazy nights when I cried myself to sleep
Now melodrama never makes me weep anymore…”

Freshman year of college was supposed to be my big break from small town drama. An hour and a half from home, I was hoping to take my true self out of hiding. Turns out I was nowhere near ready to be who I am and reading about Hester’s public shaming didn’t help my self-confidence. But secretly I was contemplating how to finally be free and “Haven’t Got Time” sounded like good advice. Again, it was Simon’s chorus, where she lists the reasons for letting go of her hurt, that makes the song memorable:

“No, I haven't got time for the pain
I haven't got room for the pain
I haven't the need for the pain…”

Letting go of pain was a new concept for me. Before hearing Carly’s declaration of freedom from it, I’d never considered being free of pain an option. As a child, I figured out how life works by watching grownups around me bearing their pain, as if it were an expectation: If I wanted to be an adult, I’d need to learn how to carry the weight of my pain.

“Suffering was the only thing that made me feel I was alive
That's just how much it cost to survive in this world…”

I never told anyone what “Haven’t Got Time” awakened in me while I was in college. Most of my friends were caught up in a different kind of drama, making valiant attempts to hook up. None of them were talking about pain, least of all how to let go of it. But when I was alone, maybe on a weekend drive back to the hometown I was trying to grow away from, I’d listen to Carly’s song. With car windows shut tight, I’d sing it loud, feeling the exhilaration of telling pain to take a hike.

Those top-of-my-lungs renditions actually made a difference. Like so many pop songs have done, “Pain” offered me a new idea: self-care. Music had already taught me how to be a good friend; songs like “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Lean on Me” took care of that. But taking care of myself—self-care—was brand new territory.

“You showed me how, how to leave myself behind
How to turn down the noise in my mind…”

I’m pretty sure the “you” that Carly refers to in “Pain” is a reference to her sparkly-new relationship with James Taylor. But with pop music’s version of falling in love looking unlikely for me, I started thinking of the song’s “you” as someone I could trust to talk with about my pain. A wise older friend. A counselor. A therapist.

I took my first venture into therapy after graduating college and landing a teaching job in Pennsylvania. But being even farther from home couldn’t shake my true feelings loose. I never told that therapist what was really eating away at me. That wouldn’t come until I’d been through my second, third and fourth counselor. But in between those attempts to reveal the source of my pain, I’d keep hearing “Haven’t Got Time,” analyzing a phrase here or there that made sense:

“Til you showed me how, how to fill my heart with love…”

That’s really all it would take, one therapist suggested. Fill your heart with love. To make room for it, let go of some pain.

There are lots of people I can thank for my full heart today. Along with family and friends, there’s Carly Simon, who thought to write a song about the joy of releasing pain. There’s my college professor, who raised that song to literary heights. There’s each therapist, whose careful listening brought me one step closer. And there’s me, who never gave up on a good song’s advice.

"Both Sides Now" Joni Mitchell

Although these days I primarily write non-fiction essays or books, in my heart I’m a poet. For reasons I’ve never fully understood, when something personal needs to be expressed, it comes out as a poem. It certainly wasn’t high school English class that inspired my lyrical writing; I found classic poetry as difficult to comprehend as a foreign language. Instead, I discovered my muse after the school day, homework unfinished on my bedroom desk, while I listened to the real poets: pop singers offering their verses from radio airwaves or my hi-fi.

I had no trouble relating to the singer-songwriters of my teen years. Neils Diamond and Young, Paul Simon, with or without Garfunkel, Jackson Browne, Cat Stevens and others, stirred emotions in me that my English teachers hoped I’d feel from their elusive poets.  If those teachers could have observed me studying my favorite lyrics I might have at least earned a little extra credit. One song in particular would have landed me an A.

Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now was the first song I heard as a poem. Though I didn’t know it at the time, Joni used a poetic technique known as metaphor to tell her Both Sides story. Metaphors are words or phrases that compare two things not normally thought of as relatable, and within the opening stanza of her song, Joni accomplishes this three times:

“Rows and flows of angel hair
and ice cream castles in the air
and feather canyons everywhere
I've looked at clouds that way…”

Who among us hasn’t looked at the white shifting shapes above and seen something more than condensed water vapor? Now that was a poetic image I could comprehend. 

Throughout Both Sides Now, Joni relies on metaphor, expressing love as “moons and Junes and Ferris wheels and the dizzy dancing way you feel,” then imagines “dreams and schemes and circus crowds” as life. By building her song with those unique images, Mitchell does what the best writers always manage to do: they let us see the world in new ways.

Inspired by her uncommon vision, I started writing my own observations of the world. Ideas for poems started coming fast and furious, sometimes two or three a day. I stopped seeing significant events as if they were only newspaper headlines. Things didn’t seem black or white anymore, nor did I feel compelled to label them good or evil. Instead, I chose to think of them metaphorically, comparing my latest inner conflict with the signs of struggle found on a nature trail, or using observations of the birds at my feeder to describe acts of human kindness. It was a refreshing outlook and I had Joni Mitchell to thank. But there was more she would teach me.

About fifteen years ago, a friend gave me a copy of Mitchell’s latest CD, a retrospective of her long career. As you’d expect, Joni included Both Sides Now, but along with her original version she also offered an updated rendition. What I heard shocked me.

I hadn’t been following Mitchell’s career for a couple decades, but even though I expected her voice would have matured with age, it sure sounded like something beyond growing old had affected Joni’s. Her vocal range was dramatically lower. Aware that she’d been a lifelong smoker, I assumed this radical shift could be traced to too many cigarettes. Joni, however, claims the change is an unfortunate combination of vocal nodules, a compressed larynx and the lingering effects of polio, which she’d contracted as a young girl. Whatever the reason, Mitchell had slid from her famous soprano to a female tenor. Take a listen to her two versions of Both Sides Now back to back:

Both Sides Now 1969

Both Sides Now 2003

Once I got over the shock of her huskier voice, I began to appreciate Joni’s revamped Both Sides Now.  The song’s lush orchestration and slower interpretation made the song more believable. I’d always had trouble trusting that as a young adult—Joni was 24 when she composed Both Sides Now —she could have written such a wise perspective. How could a 24-year-old write about looking at life and love from two points of view? Hadn’t young Joni only lived one?

Here’s where Mitchell offered me a second poetry lesson. The new Both Sides Now was also more believable because I was entering the period of life kindly referred to as later-middle age. I was already composing poems that examined what I’d learned and lost, using handy metaphors like meandering creeks and insurmountable mountains. Once I heard Joni’s mature voice convincingly comparing two sides of life, I began to see her as an inspirational metaphor.

Throughout Joni’s career, rather than remaining typecast as a ‘60s folksinger, she ventured off to explore jazz, bebop and, with her reinterpreted Both Sides Now, symphonic music. I thought of her career choices as proof that we are not defined by our accomplishments, nor are we a reflection of our bank accounts or relationship status. By living like her best years are not behind her, Joni suggests a new way to ponder the end of my life.

As I move toward that end, I keep all my Joni Mitchell CDs close at hand. Some days I need the wisdom of her young voice; other times it’s her graceful dance with aging that ignites my imagination. Either way, Joni Mitchell never fails to send me to pen and paper, where I continue to write my version of a life lived from both sides.

"Out in the Country" Three Dog Night

I was lucky to have been born and raised in the country. My childhood home was a few miles outside a small town and, other than a dozen houses scattered along our road, I was surrounded by farm fields and forests. When things at home weren’t to my liking or when my inner confusion got to be too much, I could slip out my back door, walk a few hundred yards and be in deep woods. I discovered at an early age that the world made more sense after spending time with nature.

That was life my first eleven years. In 1966, my parents moved into town and I got busy trying to fit into school and social groups. I spent hours listening to records and watched way too much TV. Then I went away to college and tried communal living and rowdy beer blasts. Life accelerated from there: finding a job, marrying and fatherhood. My first friend, nature, was forgotten.

But it hadn’t forgotten me. Once the stresses of an overly busy life began taking its toll, I started searching for how I ended up feeling out of sorts so often. Why did crowds of people rattle me so? Why did noise trigger my anxiety? I talked with friends about this; some offered suggestions, and some, comfort. One friend, though, led me to the discovery of what was lacking in my life and what I’d so deeply forgotten.

Tom is a lover of nature and among his greatest joys are hikes into the Adirondack Mountains. After we’d met and began talking about our interests, he mentioned summers spent at his family cottage nestled among those mountains. “Let’s take a day trip!” he suggested, selecting Black Bear Mountain as our first Adirondack climb. I Googled some stats on Black Bear and figured that its 3.8-mile round trip and gradual 700-foot rise in elevation was doable.

I was right. I could have easily sailed right to Bear’s peak, but, for Tom, climbing a mountain doesn’t have anything to do with reaching its summit. He took his time, which slowed me down enough to notice the branches brushing my arms. Enough to smell the pine needles and fallen leaves blanketing the earth. Enough to recognize something in me reviving.

At the top of Black Bear, I noticed a quickening of my heart. That’s odd, I thought. I knew I was in good shape, so why the rapid breathing? What had my pulse racing through my body? I stood quietly, taking in the panoramic view of Adirondack country. A song started playing in my head. “Out in the Country.”

“Out in the Country” was never my favorite Three Dog Night recording. I don’t think it was anybody’s. During their big hit years—1969 to’75—people went crazy over “Joy to the World,” or believed that “One” was the loneliest number. Their fans theorized why “Mama Told Me Not to Come.” The group seemed to choose their songs carefully, giving each a unique sound and message. That was the case when they released “Out in the Country” in 1970. The song made a perfect anthem for a new celebration that would begin that year: Earth Day.

“Before the breathing air is gone

Before the sun

is just a bright spot in the nighttime

Out where the rivers like to run

I stand alone

and take back something worth remembering…”

Long after they’d faded from the music scene, I purchased Three Dog Night’s greatest hit collection. That’s when “Out in the Country” got lodged in my brain. But it wasn’t until I stood at the top of Black Bear Mountain, seeing all the way back to my younger me cradled in the crotch of a tree, that I was able to find my something worth remembering.

I didn’t want to leave that Adirondack hike. But there was a job waiting and a family that needed me. Tom and I talked about the tug-of-war between obligations and nature’s healing. There will be other mountains, he assured me. 

He was right, of course, and gradually I learned to pay attention when my inner voice suggested it was time for another day in nature. As you might have guessed, that voice belongs to Three Dog Night:

 “Whenever I need to leave it all behind

or feel the need to get away

I find a quiet place

far from the human race

out in the country…”

"Roll Me Away" Bob Seger

I came to appreciate Bob Seger late in life; 2005 to be exact. It wasn’t like I’d never heard his music before, having spent two years spinning records as a travelling deejay. Without fail, someone in the crowd needed to hear “Old Time Rock & Roll” if they were in the mood to party, or “Night Moves” if they wanted to cuddle on the dancefloor. Bob had plenty of recognizable hits, all with his tough guy, been-around-the-block vocals. So I was well aware of who Seger was, but I could never relate to his bravado.

That changed when I hit my 50th birthday in ‘05. There’s something about crossing the half-century mark that can make a person stop and look at life. It’s a time to consider what we’ve achieved and, more importantly, what needs our attention before it’s too late. I had no problem identifying my major sticking point: I’d never completely accepted myself as a gay man. I even had a joke about it, telling friends that I’d been in and out of the closet so many times I should install a revolving door. Back and forth I’d go, first being OK with who I was and then ashamed. Finally, at fifty, I’d had enough.

As usual, music was my counsel and comfort as I considered my fifty-year-old self. For reasons I’m not quite sure of, Seger’s music was calling to me. Maybe I needed that edge in his voice, his “I don’t give a damn what other people think.”  At any rate, as a nod to my conviction to be exactly who I am, I bought Seger’s greatest hits album and struck gold with its opening track, “Roll Me Away.”

A minor hit, I’d never heard “Roll Me Away” before and its pleasing piano intro didn’t sound like anything I’d associated with Seger. I was in unexpected musical territory and, more importantly, unprepared for where his lyrics would take me.

 “Took a look down a westbound road,
right away I made my choice
Headed out to my big two-wheeler,
I was tired of my own voice…”

Tired of my own voice. Seger had my attention.  A few lines later, his drummer kick-started the song’s forward motion and his piano player went honky-tonk. We were back in familiar Seger territory. Bob continued his story.

“Twelve hours out of Mackinaw City
stopped in a bar to have a brew
Met a girl and we had a few drinks
and I told her what I'd decided to do…”

I got a little hung up with the bar scene and the girl, but, thankfully, I hung in there because by the time Seger got to his first chorus, I was ready to hop on back of his bike:

 “Roll me away,
won't you roll me away tonight
I’m lost, I feel double-crossed
and I'm sick of what's wrong and what's right…”

I couldn’t have agreed more. I was sick, too; physically, emotionally and spiritually. Sick of what locking myself in a closet had done to my first fifty years. But tired as I was with my old life, I couldn’t figure out why I was so enthralled with this song about a biker’s journey. I’ve never been much of a traveler by any means of transportation. As a card carrying introvert who prefers the comfort of home, I’ve never wanted to head off and explore the unknown. So why did I feel my heart soar with “Roll Me Away”? Seger’s second stanza helped answer my question:

“Somewhere along a high road
the air began to turn cold
She said she missed her home
I headed on alone…”

One thing my half-century had taught me was that figuring out who we are and where we’re heading is often done alone. We turn down the noise of the world and listen to the wise voice within. We figure out our own road.

“Stood alone on a mountaintop,
starin' out at the Great Divide
I could go east, I could go west,
it was all up to me to decide…”

Bob’s sage advice was plenty for me to chew on, but he’d saved his best wisdom for last. The music crescendoed and he shared it as only Seger can:

“Gotta keep rollin, gotta keep ridin',
keep searchin' till I find what's right
And as the sunset faded
I spoke to the faintest first starlight and said next time…”

To make sure I was listening, Bob screamed his conclusion:

“…next time,
we'll get it right!”

My fifty-year-old heart was pumping hard. As the piano trailed off to wherever the road would lead, I imagined myself grabbing the handles of that bike and taking off for…well… where? It didn’t matter; I was certain I wanted to be somewhere—or was it someone?—else.

I haven’t done a lot of traveling since first hearing “Roll Me Away.” I still prefer laying my head on my own pillow at the end of a day. But since having the good fortune of meeting up with Seger’s song, my second set of fifty years has been a whole different trip.  Being who I am has made going to the grocery store an adventure, because living in the world is not about seeing things I’ve never seen before; it’s about showing up for life as the full human being that I am.

? Is there a song that pointed you in a better direction ?

Celebrate! Celebrate! Dance to the Music!

If you’re a pop music lover, especially if you came of age in the 1960s, you have reason to celebrate this year. Fifty years ago, from 1969 and into 1970, some of popular music’s most influential songs made their debut. When they first began playing on the radio, oftentimes one important musical message after another, I wasn’t aware how groundbreaking they were. But now, thinking back, I can see it…clearly.

I realized what a banner year ’69 into ’70 was when I was researching and writing my book Reach Out in the Darkness: How Pop Music Saved My Mortal Soul. That collection of poems was a tribute to the songs that helped me navigate my tricky teen years. As I wrote those poems, I researched details about the key songs of my youth, noting who composed them, the topics they covered and when they first started showing up on radio playlists. That’s when I realized that, as the ‘60s gave way to the ‘70s, many of the songs that saved my life were also changing the world.

I ended up writing a poem about those influential recordings, calling it “My Ten Commandments.” I chose that title to make a bold statement about how those pop songs became as important to me as religion is for others. To show how powerful the songs’ messages were, “My Ten Commandments” was not written as a traditional poem; in fact, I didn’t write a single word of it. Instead, I let the lyrics of ten important songs from 1969 and’70 tell my story. For example:

Yes, a new world’s coming

the one we’ve had visions of,

coming in peace, coming in joy, coming in love.  “New World Coming”  Mama Cass

Reach out and touch somebody's hand

Make this world a better place,

if you can.           “Reach Out & Touch”  Diana Ross

Look over yonder, what do you see?

The sun is a-risin’ most defiinitely

A new day’s comin’

people are changin’…    “Crystal Blue Persuasion” Tommy James & the Shondells

When I heard Mama Cass, Diana and Tommy sing the promise of those songs, I believed them with all my heart. They and the other seven commandments were beacons of hope as I moved toward adulthood. Rereading their lyrics for this blog, I needed a refresher as to why those songs were so important to the world in ‘69 and ’70. A quick Google search uncovered these headlines:

 — January 1969. Richard Nixon takes office and immediately escalates the Vietnam War.

—  June 1969. New York City’s Stonewall riots break open gay rights.

—  July 1969. Man walks on the moon.

—  August 1969. Woodstock reinvents what it means to attend a concert.

—  January 1970. After two million die, Biafra loses its battle for freedom.

—  May 1970. Four students are shot to death at Ohio’s Kent State.

—  September 1970. Jimi Hendrix overdoses. Two weeks later, Janis Joplin follows.

Raised in a small town in Upstate New York, to me those headlines were just words that Walter Cronkite reported to my father night after night. They didn’t seem important to my world of school and teen angst until my top 40 radio station—my lifeline—helped me make sense of it all. Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” warned us that it was time to “get back to the garden,” Neil Young mourned those Kent State students with his cry “Four Dead in Ohio,” and when The Fifth Dimension sent the song “Aquarius” to the top of the charts, it felt like I was on that spaceship racing for the moon.

Along with the outer world’s turmoil, I was also fighting an inner battle, trying to come to terms with my sexuality. I’d been silently struggling for years and often found the songs on the radio—most of them were boy-meets-girl— unrelatable, so, by 1969, at age 14, I had given up the idea that I could have romantic love. Then, miraculously, along came songs about another kind of love: brotherly love, love-thy-neighbor love…you know, Ten Commandments kind of love.

Come on people now, smile on your brother

everybody get together,

 try to love one another, right now.     “Get Together”  The Youngbloods

When you’re weary, feeling small,

when tears are in your eyes

I’ll dry them all…                “Bridge Over Troubled Water” Simon & Garfunkel

Think of your fellow man

Give him a helping hand

Put a little love in your heart…       “Put A  Little Love in Your Heart” Jackie DeShannon

Those Ten Commandments songs opened a new road for me.  A year later, Carole King wrote “You’ve Got a Friend” and James Taylor sang it to me night after night from my record player. I believed in what James and Carole sang and decided that was how I was going to live my life. Repeated listenings to all those songs led me to a human services career and a lifetime of good, solid friendships. They made me who I am, and when I listen to them today, I hear how they still stir the soul of a teenage boy trying to figure out his world.

Carole King Gives Me Hope

Regular readers of this blog know I created it to honor the influence that music has on me. I write about songs and singers that were there at life’s pivotal moments, and when I listen to them now, they seem like an audio roadmap of my journey. Today’s blog, however, is about a music maker who has given me much more than a few memorable landmarks. Her name is Carole King and thanks to her, I’m an optimist.

Can music really make a person more hopeful? I asked myself that question as I pondered the origins of my optimism. I certainly didn’t grow up on the sunny side of life, having been born and raised in Central New York, better known as the cloud-covered capital of the world. With about 55 percent of our days sun-deprived—that’s over half of our lives—it was hard to see my glass as half full in all that dreariness.

Maybe it was to escape those cloudy conditions or maybe it was to retreat from a world I didn’t fit into, but I ended up spending a lot of time in my childhood bedroom, playing records. I listened to all kinds of music, but when I think about the songs that have stuck with me they’ve been those about finding hope in a not-so-promising life. And at the top of that list are the inspiring songs of Carole King.

I first heard Carole like many of us did, on her landmark album Tapestry. Granted, her radio hits from that collection weren’t exactly uplifting; “It’s Too Late” mourns a dying love and “So Far Away” aches for a long-distance lover. But after hundreds of listenings, it’s the other songs on Tapestry that remain my favorites: the pledge of “You’ve Got a Friend,” the celebratory “I Feel the Earth Move,” the colorful “Tapestry,” and this encouraging advice from “Beautiful”:

You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face
and show the world all the love in your heart
Then people gonna treat you better
You're gonna find, yes you will
that you're beautiful as you feel…

 The Broadway producers who turned Carole’s life into a musical were wise to use “Beautiful” as its title. What a great theme for the show’s story of her long and successful career as a singer-songwriter, starting when she was fifteen. Carole wasn’t much older than that when she met her first husband, Gerry Goffin, and the two co-wrote dozens of classic pop songs. Gerry was in charge of lyrics and here’s a few lines from of one of his optimistic musings, Herman’s Hermits’ “I’m Into Something Good.”

 “Woke up this mornin' feelin' fine
There's somethin' special on my mind
Last night I met a new girl in the neighborhood
Somethin' tells me I'm into something good…”

Gerry’s words are promising, but all these years later, the song wouldn’t still feel so good to sing without Carole’s bounding melody. Take a listen: “I’m Into Something Good.”

 After I fell in love with Tapestry, I wanted to hear every song Carole had written, finding hope in many of the classics she and Gerry wrote: “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “Some Kind of Wonderful,” “Take Good Care of My Baby”—all of them singable, hummable. Even the wistful “Up on the Roof” can chase away my blues and one listen to their “Locomotion” sends me to the dancefloor.

 Carole learned a lot from her husband’s lyric writing and after their marriage broke up, she sometimes worked with a lyricist and other times came up with the words to match her bright melodies. Each of her albums had several songs that seem to lift right off my turntable; too many to mention here, but check out my list at the end of this blog. The joy radiating from Carole’s songs may have come from her piano chord progressions or the swelling of strings she’d added, or the yearning in her voice. Or maybe it was her inspiring words, like this aptly-titled song, “Brighter” :

 We've been knowing each other
for many a year, it's true,
and I can't think of anyone else
can make me feel as good as you.
Yeah, you…you make my day
a little bit brighter in every way…

 The connection between Carole’s music and my optimism began to make sense after I bought a book of her songs for piano. I wish I had a better understanding of music theory and anatomy so I can explain how one affects the other, but let me say this: when my hands recreate Carole’s stirring songs, I feel a surge run through my body. Science aside, I call it magic.

 When I learned that Carole had written her autobiography, A Natural Woman, I couldn’t wait to read the stories behind her optimistic songs. The book offers a few examples—she wrote “Beautiful” after observing commuters on a crowded subway—but Carole revealed something else about her life that makes her heartening music mean even more.

 After ending her relationship with Goffin, Carole married three more times. There was trouble in those marriages, including one to an abusive husband. She describes the control he had over her life, his selfishness and, yes, his physical abuse. I was shocked and saddened for Carole. How was she able to continue to thrive amid such pain?

 The will to live through troubled times is often a mystery, but I’d like to think that, for Carole, it has a lot to do with her music. In fact, I think she wrote about it in a song she simply called “Music.”  When I first heard the song’s flowing melody and optimistic words, I imagined she was referring to her happy life. But now, after learning about Carole King’s challenges, and after living through mine, I think she was composing hope.

 Ah, it's not always easy
but the music keeps playing
and won't let the world get me down…

 Here are just a few Carole King songs that make my day brighter:

 A Quiet Place to Live

Ambrosia

Been to Canaan

Believe in Humanity

Bitter With the Sweet

Carry Your Load

Child of Mine

Color of Your Dreams

Corazon

Daughter of Light

Hi-De-Ho

Hold On

I Think I Can Hear You

It’s Gonna Take Some Time

It’s Gonna Work Out Fine

Jazzman

Lay Down My Life

Love Makes the World

Nightingale

Now and Forever

One

Only Love Is Real

Simple Things

So Many Ways

Stand Behind Me

Sweet Seasons

Way Over Yonder

What Have You Got to Lose

Wrap Around Joy

You Light Up My Life

"Bad" Michael Jackson

I’m a pretty tolerant guy who believes I should never judge anyone, even if I’ve walked a mile in their shoes. When it comes to music, I try to ignore gossip and paparazzi about the singers I admire. If my heart believes what they’re expressing, I don’t need the media stirring up some drama and in my half century of idolizing music makers, I’ve managed to keep my interest in them pure. That is, until it came to Michael Jackson.

I became a fan of Michael’s in 1969, when I heard him—a nine-year-old—convincingly woo his former lover with “I Want You Back.” I was 14 that year and it felt like Michael was singing for all us kids who’d been told we were too young to understand love’s ups and downs. After that, I collected every Jackson Five record and then followed Michael into his phenomenal solo career: Off the Wall in 1979 and Thriller in ‘82. To me, we were brothers of a sort, related through music, and I looked forward to a lifetime of familial ties with Michael Jackson.

That all changed in the summer of 1987 when I got a look at my musical brother on the cover of his latest album, Bad. Michael’s appearance had changed and not just because he’d shed his boyish features. With extensive makeup and some obvious plastic surgery, he’d posed for the album cover in a military-style outfit. His new look scared and repulsed me.  Though I’d never before thought twice about buying a Michael Jackson record, as I had his album in my hands I weighed its pros and cons: He’s my brother, after all, and family sticks together…But he looks so different, so unfamiliar. I returned Bad to the record bin.

That autumn was tough for me. In September I’d turned 32 years old, with emphasis on the word old. I was married at the time, raising two children in a home my wife and I had just purchased, living what many would consider an ideal young man’s life. But something hidden deep within me was terribly wrong. At the same time as I loved my family and our life, I was denying a part of myself that would not stop haunting me. On some level I knew I should be dealing with my attraction to men, but on another level—the part of me who was feeling old—couldn’t imagine how facing the truth could do any good.  It’s time to forget that part of me, I told myself.

The thing about getting old is that the heart—not the physical organ, but the part of us where emotions live—never grows old. It wants to love exactly how it loves. Though my wife and I were not discussing any of this yet, perhaps she intuitively understood that I was struggling. She certainly knew I loved music and for my birthday that year she bought me a Walkman. I’ve always been slow to catch on to new trends, so, though the portable music players had been popular for a decade, the idea of listening to music anywhere I wanted was new. Excited about my gift, I continued to neglect my troubles and headed to the music store to buy my first cassette tape.

By then I’d heard a few songs from the Bad album and they were good. As weird as he looked on that album cover, I couldn’t deny that Michael was still making great music. And with his photo on the Bad cassette tape smaller than on an album, I convinced myself to overlook appearances and give him a second chance. On a particularly trying day with my kids, I found an hour of freedom, clipped the Walkman to my belt, slipped in Bad, stuck in my earphones and pushed play. Here’s what I heard.

Bad’s title song opened with a punch—like a fist through a locked door. A pulsating rhythm followed, compelling my feet to start walking. Then Michael’s voice appeared, fresh and fierce; his story so intriguing that it lifted me out of my funk. Two minutes into my walk and I’d forgotten about Michael’s looks and remembered the way he always made me feel. As the years rolled on, Michael’s appearance would grow stranger and his actions were often hard to fathom, but on that first Walkman day, I reaffirmed my vow to not judge Michael Jackson and focus on loving his music.

Flash forward thirty years, a decade after his death, and there’s new media frenzy regarding allegations against Michael. The news is upsetting and though I’ve tried to resist it, Jackson’s life keeps getting more mysterious. I start questioning my beliefs again, thinking of disowning my musical brother. Then one day, my grandson, six years old, asked me, “Grandpa, do you have any Michael Jackson songs?”

He’d heard Michael sing in a Disney movie and, already with a keen ear for good music, wanted more. I paused before I responded, analyzing my options. He knows nothing of Michael’s controversial life, I thought. He just liked his song. Then this: But should I be introducing him to a singer whose character is in question?

It was my belief in music that returned me to sanity. I pulled out a CD of Jackson’s greatest hits and my grandson gave them a listen. When he came to “Bad,” he kept hitting replay, each time turning up the volume and breaking into dance. I’m 64 years old now, 50 years beyond the day I first thought of Michael Jackson as my brother. I joined my grandson in dance, joyful to have the newest member of my family remind me to keep my attention on the song.

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Did you ever have to choose between a singer’s music and his or her behavior?

Aretha Lives On

I still can’t believe she’s gone. A year later, after the media finally stopped running clips of her demanding “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” after The New York Times’ obituary hit all her career highlights, after she appeared one last time on the cover of Rolling Stone, I still struggle with the fact that Aretha Franklin has died. How can it be when her voice, widely celebrated as music’s greatest, still moves me so?

The loss of our music idols—another one seems to fall every week—can be difficult to fully accept when a YouTube search or an iCloud “library” delivers their voices, sounding alive as ever, in an instant. So, if their music plays on, what do we really lose when a singer dies? This past year, listening to a lot of Aretha while contemplating her passing, has led me to believe that it’s the difference between a recorded song and a live performance. When you’ve seen a music icon like Aretha in concert, which I did three times, a singer becomes more than her songs.

In 1989, I attended my first Aretha concert in Philadelphia. I was beyond excited to see and hear her, even when I found out the show was a memorial to her siblings Carolyn and Cecil, who’d recently passed. I did get a little worried when she walked on stage dressed in black, then stood silently as the orchestra played a medley of songs Carolyn had written for Aretha. Two of Franklin’s entourage stood by her side, holding her up as she openly wept.  But Aretha did not let the concert linger in sorrow. Handed a microphone, she broke into song, assuring us with “Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher and Higher.” We stood and cheered and I walked out of that arena believing in life beyond death.

A few years later Aretha appeared in Williamsport, PA, where I once taught school. Friends invited me back to watch her perform at the opening of the city’s new arts center and I was lucky enough to be sitting front row when she strolled on stage in a jumpsuit and ponytailed, looking young again; reborn, you might say. The audience was in tuxedos and evening gowns, not exactly dressed for Aretha’s rhythm & blues, but by the end of the show she had every row on their feet, dancing to “Chain of Fools.” She inspires life in every one of us fools, I thought, as we exited the righteously christened arts center.

It was at my final Aretha concert, in 2008, where I began to imagine we might always have her in full voice. She’d been invited to perform at Hamilton College, which offered alumni two complimentary tickets. A friend, an alumnus, invited me: I was going to see Aretha live—for free! She was 65 years old and had slowed down considerably since the Williamsport event, spending much of the Hamilton concert at the piano, which suited me just fine. I’m not alone in thinking her best work was born at the keyboard. As the show wrapped up, she asked the audience—yes, asked us—if she could perform a gospel number. We roared our approval.

At that, Aretha kicked off her fancy shoes, lifted her floor-length dress a few inches and started celebrating. I own her Amazing Grace album, recorded live at a Baptist church, so I was familiar with the power and command of her gospel singing. But I’d never been in the room where she was proclaiming it. Effortlessly, she shed the burden of her severe weight problem and the fact that she was a woman past her prime. Overcome by her spirit, I leapt from my seat 30 rows back and rushed toward the stage, dancing in her joy. I’ve never again experienced what I felt that night.

As I exited the concert, drenched in sweat, I again had this crazy notion: Maybe Aretha could go on forever. Hadn’t she always beat the odds? When the hits stopped coming in the early 1970s, people gave up on her.  But in 1985, she found her way back to the top of the charts on “The Freeway of Love.” She showed up at Divas Live in 1998 and reclaimed her crown from powerhouse vocalists like Mariah Carey and Celine Dion.  In 2012, numerous concerts were cancelled amid rumors of her impending death, but three years later she appeared at the Kennedy Center to honor singer-songwriter Carole King, proving those rumors wrong with a roof raising version of King’s “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman.” If you’ve never witnessed that performance, treat yourself: Aretha at the Kennedy Center. Aretha was in her 74th year that night and in her 62nd as a performer. Perhaps my crazy notion wasn’t so crazy; maybe Aretha never will die. But now she has.

I finally accepted that reality while watching the video of her funeral, a ten-hour celebration of Aretha’s life in sermons, scripture and song. I watched a little each day, intentionally stretching out my goodbye, hoping to find something I could celebrate. Then, one of the many ministers said this: “I’m grateful that I got to live on this earth at the same time as Aretha.” Amen. How fortunate I am to have seen her in person, to have heard her amazing voice in real time. How grateful I am to still feel my spirit lifted by hers.

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Have you seen your musical idol in concert?

"Home to Myself" Melissa Manchester

Is there a song that defines who you are? Have you ever heard a song in your younger years, but it took decades to figure out why it means so much? My answer to both those questions can be found in one song, Melissa Manchester’s “Home to Myself.” It took thirty years after first hearing it, but I can now say with certainty that this song perfectly describes an important part of who I am. I’m an introvert.

Introverts have gotten a bad rap in our hyper-social culture, with extroverts seeming to have an edge in everything from career advancement to establishing friendships. I bought into this belief at a young age and before I became a writer all my jobs took place in busy work environments: counselor at an overnight camp, teacher in an elementary school, traveling deejay for large celebratory events, and my long career supervising teenagers and young adults in recreation programs. Those jobs required me to be engaging for extended periods of time. Day after day, year after year. All with a smile on my face.

My life of active community work eventually took its toll, and in the final years before I retired, around 2010, I was in rough shape. A friend who’d had a similar health scare described what I was going through as a “breakdown of my nervous system,” which sounded kinder than suggesting I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown. No matter how I described it, though, I couldn’t deny my symptoms: I tired easily, kept losing my train of thought, and had trouble problem solving my staff’s needs. Whenever possible, I’d escape to nature, walking among trees and listening to the sound of nothing.

One day, when complaining about my overstressed life, a friend asked, Have you ever thought you might be an introvert?

I was shocked at her suggestion and couldn’t immediately respond. Being an introvert sounded so tragic, so wrong. But after contemplating her question, I had to admit it felt right. I started to look back over my always-on-the-move life and remembered how being in large crowds made me feel trapped.  As often happens when I’m trying to figure out a difficult situation, a song popped into my mind. Click to hear “Home to Myself.”

I owe ever hearing “Home to Myself” to a friend I lived with back in the 1980s. I didn’t care much for Melissa Manchester at the time; her radio-friendly songs like “Don’t Cry Out Loud” and “Midnight Blue” seemed overproduced and overly dramatic. But my housemate was an FM radio deejay, a job that introduced her to lots of music beyond Top 40, including an earlier folk-based album by Melissa with the song “Home to Myself.” I can’t remember if my housemate actually shared the song with me or if I overheard it playing on her stereo, but there was something about the words—I couldn’t have explained it back then—that was comforting.

I wake up and see
the light of the day
shining on me
Make my own time
it's mine to spend
Think to myself
my own best friend
It's not so bad all alone
comin' home to myself again…

Flash forward thirty years, when I contemplated my friend’s suggestion of introversion.  Putting it in context with the lyrics to “Home to Myself” was like finally finding the key to a locked door. Yes, I realized, I’m an introvert.

I began to research what being introverted meant, with a couple books proving to be particularly helpful: Quiet:  The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain; and The Introvert’s Way: Living a Quiet Life in a Noisy World, by Sophia Dembling. Those books helped me understand why I need significant amounts of alone time. Instead of thinking of myself as we introverts are often seen—hermits, reclusive, odd—I learned that introversion is simply the way I prefer to live life. I have no desire to permanently escape from the world and I’ve learned how to manage my work schedule and enjoy meaningful relationships, but after a long day, literally and figuratively I want to come home to myself.

 Now I understand whatever I feel is whoever I am
Watching my life and how its grown
Looking on back to friends I've known
It’s not so bad all alone
coming home to myself again…

For me, being an introvert doesn’t just kick in at the end of the day. Since starting my writing career, I’ve discovered the joy of working alone. On days when that isn’t possible, I find I manage better by grabbing quiet time when and where I can to recharge my batteries. If I’m attending an overnight conference or retreat, I spring for a single room rather than share one with someone who likes to chat their way to sleep. When meeting a friend at a restaurant, I take time to find its quietest corner.  

And on the days when it feels like life is crowding me, I have Melissa’s song to remind me that it’s okay to create the space I need.

…Something inside
keeps making me strong
and in the bad times
I'll get along
'cause it's not so bad all alone
comin' home to myself again
I'm comin' home…

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What song defines your personality?