The past eight weeks have been very, very difficult. So much challenge compressed into so little time.
My time in college and the years immediately following were dark for me, as well. Peter Gabriel's duet with Kate Bush, Don't Give Up, was one of my coping songs. It's one of the few songs that explicitly try to comfort without coming off as cheesy or treacly. At least to me.
And so it fits now, too. Thankfully, blessedly, my connections to family and friends are stronger this time around. There are people I can fall back on. That river's flowing.
It's been almost 30 years since I picked up acoustic guitar. I wish I could say I was 30 years skilled, but I'm not and that's a different story. At the time I was a fan of general rock music, but in college I was introduced to Eric Johnson and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and everything changed in my appreciation of guitar playing. The deep blend of soulful emotion, technical ability, and genre mastery astounded me, even with my very basic level of skill and knowledge.
Johnson's Ah Via Musicom, which came out in 1990, simply blew me away. From the transcendent joy of Cliffs of Dover to the tasteful cool of East Wes, I loved every note and have listened to the album hundreds of times.
Johnson and Vaughan, of course, were not the only guitar players making splashes in the 80s and 90s, but no other contemporaries moved me the same way. There are many I respected, and some who contributed singular pieces that I completely love, but after Stevie was killed and Johnson went into a sort of reclusiveness, I began to despair of finding another blues- and jazz-influenced rock guitarist who could move me the same way. I coped by broadening my appreciation historically and across genres, but longed for the player who could move me physically and emotionally in the same ways.
In 2010 I came across a 2009 release from Andy Timmons, Resolution. A Pandora station (thank you Pandora!) I set up for instrumental guitar played the title track and I was immediately smitten. Since buying the full album, I've played it through more times than I can count. The songs are very original, yet many have clear ties to influences, SRV and EJ included.
The entire record is phenomenal, and several songs will be permanent favorites. For a while, Resolution was the one I'd listen to over and over, but over time I found that the final listed cut was becoming part of my constant mental playlist. The Prayer / The Answer is a fugue of sorts that expresses a single call and single response across a powerful dynamic range. It's emotional power for me is visceral and leaves me speechless at times. Even now I feel unable to describe it, so I'll just let you listen. Here's a live recording that I am very sorry not to have been present for, but fortunately was preserved for us.
So many songs have captured me over the years. Songs that rock me, make me laugh, bring me to tears, and just keep me company. I love all kinds of music and all kinds of artists and all kinds of songs.
Some, though, are more than what catches my ear or mood. These are songs that grab me and rip through whatever facade I have up currently. They bring me face to face with unexpected truth or emotion. They overwhelm me with feelings that I might not have even wanted to or know I could feel.
It seems interesting to document them. Here and here are the first two in this series.
For April is a track from Johnny Cash's American III: Solitary Man, I See a Darkness, a song written by Will Oldham (as Bonnie 'Prince' Billy) who also provides backing vocals on for Cash's version:
This song found me in the middle of a very difficult time, which included trying to sort out two wanted but challenging friendships. The lyrics and feel, a powerful and almost contradictory mixture of hope and despair, love and loss, captured perfectly what I was going through.
My two friends, both of whom sadly aren't really part of my life now, could barely have been less similar. And I needed both of them in ways neither understood very well. They each knew me differently and saw me in skewed perspectives that were true but terribly incomplete. I selfishly wished they could be melded into a single person who would be more fully my friend. And so this song, which speaks of knowing, but maybe not well; love; but not forever; peace, but not yet, was all of the sudden there as an aural description, or even decree, of what was happening. As if my life contained the fire and iron, and this song gave shape to the brand. And I was marked.
I am a melancholic. I came to grips with it years ago, and my wife sort of mostly has, as well. I'm not sure my children, though they're teens, fully realize it, but I suppose they will sooner or later. Fortunately I have plenty of parts of life that balance this out, too, so getting too far down in the hole hasn't been a problem in a long time.
Recently on NPR I heard an interview with Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell. Crowell talked about "engag(ing) melancholy as if it were a kind of revelry." I can very much relate to that. Melancholy for me is often a rich and textured feeling that brings on a sense of life that few other emotions match.
My taste in art, especially music, certainly reflects this trait. Moody, cinematic songs that explore the unintended fate-changing twists and turns of life, so often accompanied by regret, sadness, mystery, and pain, are the ones that draw me in, the ones that leave marks on me and my heart.
A while back I shared a particularly meaningful cut, and tonight I wanted to post another. This one was written by someone not old enough to have built up what he sings of, yet somehow he manages to capture the essence of how 40, 60, or 80 years of life can haunt us.
"I could use another twenty years to fix the last fifteen, but it never seems to work to my advantage."
Here's to a richness in life, even if it's weary and worn.
There was a time when I could rightly be accused of being a rabid U2 fan. Those days are gone, but some of their older music is still among my favorites. By the time No Line on The Horizon came out in 2009, though, I was quite disillusioned with the band and only gave the album a cursory listen or two.
Somehow however, 3 years later, I am completely taken in by a deep cut from the record, Moment of Surrender. The solitary mood, the plaintive lyrics, the languid music. It's been a soundtrack by itself for me for the past couple of months. And I couldn't even tell you how I heard it again after several years of avoiding U2.
Have a listen.
In a few weeks or so I expect this to wear off, but for now it simply fits, no matter how I used to feel or feel now about the band. That's music. Sometimes you find it. Sometimes it finds you.
