A Soundtrack for a Soul

“When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.” Henry David Thoreau

“I love music. Music is the soundtrack to the crappy movie that is my life.” Chris Rock

“And I dug right down to the bottom of my soul to see what I had inside…”
This blog is going to be different from my usual offerings at an especially odd time. I am choosing this week to not write about ethics, professionalism, education, violence, or social justice in a week that could handle all of them and more. I decided to write this piece instead after some serious consideration this week to step back from the rage that resides in my own heart and soul for what the last week has been to our country and the people in it. I undoubtedly have thoughts and very strong feelings myself about injustice of all kinds, but I could not yet possibly put them together in a way that at all feels appropriate today. Instead, while corresponding with a new friend this week, I was reminded of the goodness of the human spirit and a couple of other things as well.

The first, you’re never too old for a new friend, especially when they are authentically true to themselves. The second, I remembered the expression that “Music heals the soul.” Music has always been significant in the background of my life, but this has never been more personally true for me than it has been over the last five years. After taking some time to reflect on what I joked to my new friend as a blog post called “Songs that Saved Me,” I thank my new friend for encouraging me to dig deep for this one. I apologize in advance for any top ten feel of this post for that was not the direct intent. Believe me, as it pertains to music, a top ten list is impossible; this is just a very small reflection of the music that has healed my soul.

I wrote that music has been significant in the background of my life, not the foreground. The reason I wrote it as such is that I can’t sing. I don’t play an instrument. Also, I can’t read music or fully grasp the technical nature of what brings it to life. These are not my strengths, yet, none of these things means I do not love and appreciate music. I’ve loved music even back to the days of hearing “Be Not Afraid” sung in Catholic school mass by a chorus of children, not by me of course. After this correspondence with my friend, I thought to myself I should probably write down for myself if nothing else what has been happening over the last five years in my own life and relationship with music as it seems to have become an occupying spiritual force within my soul.

Of course, it began further back than five years, without me realizing it. When I grew up in the late 1970s and 1980s I knew music was not my talent, but I hoped that movies would be as I wanted to be the next Steven Spielberg like many young people of my generation. Because of my love of the movies, which I owe to my mother, I found myself not only blown away by the movies of my youth, but also their music in such soundtracks/scores like the original Star Wars trilogy, Rocky, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Blues Brothers, Superman, E.T., The Big Chill, The Karate Kid, and even the Broadway musical, A Chorus Line. Again, I have my mother to thank for that one. While my father was taking me to see Annie, a very fine musical back in the day, my mother was exposing me to a more mature world at the young age of ten.

“Nothing” – A Chorus Line 1975 Broadway Cast, Priscilla Lopez

Being the only child of divorced parents created a different worldview than many of my peers that didn’t share that ever so large detail in common. At too early an age I was the man of the house in many respects. It’s not supposed to be that way, but it just was. Years later I may have looked back on a childhood that was lost in a blur of becoming an adult, yet, the further removed I am from those years I realize I wouldn’t be the person I am today without those personal challenges and the support of excellent parenting. My mother and her friends spoke to me differently during those years. My mother still fueled my childhood imagination without having the luxury of treating me like a child. For so much of my early life it was her and I talking to one another about the way life actually was, more in line with Kramer vs. Kramer, than something from a Disney movie.

In addition to the movies that allowed us to share quality time in those days, my mother also loved music. In particular, I remember observing the passion on my mother’s face when she would listen to Bette Midler sing “The Rose.” Even then, I was wise enough to know something about that song reached into her own soul without ever having to say a word, or ask what it meant, or why. It felt so very personal that I was sure I could not understand and maybe it was supposed to be that way. I accepted it as her sacred space. We always had music in our house and the records and tapes to go with it spanning all kinds of artists over the years. That was until one day of the infamous record incident where all the records were just gone. I never understood it at the time, but it was just one of those things I knew I’d better stop asking about out of respect: her records – her wishes. Over 25 years later and I still step lightly when I bring up the incident of the day the records died, if not the music itself.

“The Rose” – Bette Midler

No matter the challenges that came along with my own growing up experience, my mother planted so many seeds of things I love to this day: photography, reading, movies, and music. A piece of music I first heard in a downtown theater in Boston at the age of seven has stuck with me forever. It was “Yoda’s Theme” from The Empire Strikes Back. I was raised to be one of the faithful legion of Star Wars fans like many born in the 70s and 80s were, but as I got older it was no longer about the universe I wanted to visit in order to use The Force to fix the broken parts of my youth I thought were in need of fixing. Instead, in the music of John Williams The Empire Strikes Back it became more about the beauty of possibility that life could hold in the future ahead despite it being forever unknown. I apparently carried with me into my adult life the music of Yoda’s own message – “Difficult to see. Always in motion the future is.”

“Yoda’s Theme” – Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back – John Williams

“Que no le queda remedio más que amarte…”
I’m still not sure a movie character has uttered a more truthful statement than Yoda. The future was and remains difficult to see and is in motion. Of course, I missed the part about the future also being cruel and unforgiving as I would come to learn. Living with the psychological pain of an only child of divorce was a burden itself while trying to navigate adulthood. I then came to realize that the future did hold worse things, including the sudden death of my 44 year old stepfather of a heart attack during the September of my senior year of college. My mother had finally found the love of her life and I found in him a friend, father, and to this day the kindest person I have ever known. My heart could not help but to love him immediately and be absolutely soul crushingly destroyed when I heard the news from a total stranger over the phone. After destroying my own apartment in a fury of anger I have not known since, I sat and considered the future absent of the best man I’d ever known. As I sat there in sorrow for my present and my future, a friend walked through my door that day and sat with me, cried with me, and encouraged me that I had the strength to get myself back into motion. Almost 20 years later, I consider myself blessed to call that same friend one of the finest women I’ve ever known and still know.

“Go Rest High on That Mountain” – Vince Gill

My stepdad had a Vince Gill CD that had come out not long before he died. There was a song called “Go Rest High on That Mountain.” Wherever it was that he went to rest, I refused to rest after graduation and I went to Nashville, music city USA. I did not go to pursue my musical talents, as I had none. Instead I went to Vanderbilt University Divinity School to seek answers and questions to things that lay well beyond Yoda and The Empire Strikes Back. I went there not to become ordained in a faith tradition, or even to save the world, but instead I went to learn more about my place in being a good person in this world, what my faith experience had meant, and what if anything it would mean. I wanted to “get busy living” rather than to “get busy dying.” (The Shawshank Redemption) How I wound up in divinity school is the best thing that happened to me in my life that I cannot rationally explain. It challenged me academically, spiritually, psychologically, and personally. The things I learned there, the people I met there, the life I have lived since graduating from there have been so profound in so many ways. If I know nothing else in this life I know that period of time was a gift of a future my stepdad left behind. My future was truly unknown before he died and even after he died, but after he died the choice to go to Vanderbilt began a motion toward the person I am today. It was very early on in that experience that a fellow classmate played the Indigo Girls “Closer to Fine” on a guitar. Needless to say, it woke me from my numbed or depressed state and gave a stir to my soul regarding the intellectual and spiritual journey I found myself on, to where I did not know.

“Closer to Fine” – Indigo Girls

Several years later the future was also difficult to see when I chose to marry another old friend from college. We were hardly what you would call college suitehearts. It was more like soul mates that never had the right timing, the right place, the right forward motion. Then, one day all of those things strangely fell into place and left us both as surprised as the other that there were no obstacles, there were no excuses, there was just us, check yes, or no. Thankfully, we both overcame our fears and flaws to trust one another to say yes to a future together, hopeful for the best but both well aware that the future is difficult to see. Thanks to me my wife had since seen The Empire Strikes Back and was more aware of the ways of The Force. We both knew Yoda’s message of the future’s difficulty in being seen. Perhaps, two sets of eyes would be better than one. We truly began as friends and remained friends for a long time until we were engaged ten years after my stepfather’s passing and were married one day following what would have been his birthday. To the surprise of many we exited the church that day to what I know was an unconventional choice, “Fotographia” by Juanes and Nelly Furtado. We each were strengthened by the words “I can’t help but love you” and there was nothing to be afraid of on that day. Everyone loved all the unique music of our wedding day, but that one song always stands out to both of us as a celebration of our love.

“Fotographia” – Juanes and Nelly Furtado

“And the road may it rise to meet your feet…”
I wrote in the beginning that music had become an especially significant part of my life these last five years. It obviously has always been integral to the “crappy movie that is my life” as Chris Rock said, but it’s been due to the reflection over these last five years that has permitted me to see how and why. It was five years ago my wonderful wife and I anxiously journeyed to the emergency room on a Saturday night after watching Dustin Lance Blacks’ scripted movie Milk by Gus Van Sant. I was not feeling well and after some debate and discernment we decided it was better to go to the ER and feel alive and stupid than dead…and well, dead. After several hours, and almost following a major party foul of sending me home, the doctor discovered I had a pulmonary embolism, which later turned out to be two. “That could have killed you.” Is not something you want to hear ever, let alone at 3:00am in the morning with your wife at your side, and a call to be made to my mother to tell her this time we lucked out, and oh by the way, sorry for putting another brush with death in your scare category. Thankfully, after four days in the hospital and a year plus of doctors and follow ups, the end of that story circled back to the beginning. “You’re an anomaly.” Those were the words of the doctors in the beginning and in the end. Round and round to doctors I would go and where I stopped was nobody knows: comforting, yes – comforting, no.

When you’ve lived through loss and almost had it become part of your own narrative as well, it messes you up. That’s not the clinical term of course. That term begins with the letter “F.” The last five years since that time have continued to be incredibly bumpy for a variety of reasons; I think it’s called living after 35, and in this I’m probably not alone. Still, I return to two of the points where I began. The first is you’re never too old for a new friend. I have been thankful when I’ve found them these last five years, but I am also incredibly fortunate enough to have my best friend by my side through it all in my “sweet angel” of a wife. The second, I not only remember the expression that “music heals the soul,” I have come to know this to be profoundly true because the music has my whole life, I just did not realize it until the gravity of these last few years.

When you come face to face with your own mortality wearing nothing but your jeans, a hospital gown, and a Bill Belichick Patriots hoodie, you do some serious thinking. As you watch the woman you love sleep uncomfortably in the hospital chair next to you, your life immediately is forever disrupted. I questioned my profession, my place in the world, and the people in it. As I watched my wife sleep, I would think about the day back in that funeral home picking out which coffin was best for my stepdad’s funeral. Light wood? Dark wood? Did it really matter? I remember thinking how truly horrible if the love of my life was forced to ask those same questions because she happened to marry an “anomaly,” the doctors’ words, not mine! Accidents happen; we know this to be true. Ultimately, I was incredibly fortunate we went to the emergency room that night, so that evening it really was “Get busy living or get busy dying.”

To not only get busy living and keep busy living it took a lot of love, care, compassion, and humor from people I cannot ever thank enough. It took again wrestling with faith and science, especially when the science in the end said you’re fine – “dumb luck,” my words not the doctors! It took reflection, reading, movies, and yes, it took music to help heal and strengthen my soul. This musical rebirth was no accident. I awoke to the reality of how important the music always was to the meaning-making of my own life. This rebirth of something always present began by intentionally choosing to rediscover Bruce Springsteen in a way that I never got before and then suddenly had. He was the first live concert we went to after my incident in the ER and if you’ve never seen a live concert of Springsteen’s it truly is as has been described as “a religious revival.” Floodgates of emotion reached the deepest corridors of my soul like never before in my life. I began to allow music to wash over me beginning with Springsteen (“This Hard Land” being one of my favorites). I then returned to the soundtracks that shaped the contours of my entire life and to the artists and one hit wonders of both past and present. Despite surviving this “dumb luck” medical incident, the last five years has continued to challenge me in so many ways at what feels like every corner from the bombing of the Boston Marathon in my home city (“Don’t Tear Us Apart”), to time spent out of work looking for a new job (pretty much Springsteen’s entire 2012 Wrecking Ball album), to the very recent loss of a friend and one of the most generous people I ever knew (“Dream Baby Dream”). The challenges continue, as does the music.

“This Hard Land” – Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

“Don’t Tear Us Apart” – Dropkick Murphys

“Dream Baby Dream”- Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

It’s impossible for me to come up with a top ten list for just Bruce Springsteen songs, not to mention for all the music that has meant so much in my life and these last several years especially. In this blog I have scattered just some throughout as I honor those artists who continue to give to me in ways often indescribable. For anyone who happens to read this, my wife and I came up with an idea starting at our wedding that you may appreciate if music is a healing force for your soul. In the 2000s, a bunch of folks were making wedding CDs of music for people as favors. What we did was continue making a CD of music for each year we were married. Each year we’d collect a number of significant songs to us from that year from TV (“Devil Knows You’re Dead” from Friday Night Lights), movies (The Way, or the upcoming final Hobbit film), or from the variety of our life’s experiences (a Seal rendition of “Love’s Divine” played by the pastor the day we joined our church). After eight years of marriage we have a soundtrack of our lives that we can always return to. I’ve never bought in to New Year’s resolutions, but committing to this annually was completely different.

I have previously made mention in my blog that A River Runs Through It is one of my favorite books and films, and as you may guess also the soundtrack/score. There is a line from that story that says. “I am haunted by waters.” This summer I drove 3,000 miles away from my wife to start a job that ended up not working out. Without question I can tell you this: on a 3,000 mile drive you have lots of time to reflect, consider the present, dream of the future, and listen to music. The last five years have been rough, but within them have also been blessings. On my drive to Montana, listening to the soundtrack of our life together, I was not haunted by a thing. One of these blessings in fact was the feeling expressed in the Thoreau quote, “I am invulnerable.” Of course, I know as well as anyone that not to be true. Be that as it may, my soul continues to be healed by music, so I sure can feel that way for a while as I look toward the future, although difficult to see and always in motion.

“Devil Knows You’re Dead” – Delta Spirit (spoiler clips if you’ve never seen the show)

“Buen Camino” – The Way – Tyler Bates

“Love’s Divine” – Seal