Music Heals
By Clay Hipp
Musical, 1993
by Romanian artist Vasil Dobrian
You make the world a better place
When you sing
You bring us closer to a state of grace
When you sing, when you sing
Do you know the joy you bring
When you sing?
-John Gorka
Someone told me recently that it seems as if your music blog and your journal entries are overlapping or even merging. It took me a few minutes to ponder and digest that thought. Ultimately, I could not disagree.
About six months before we finally set up the Jomeokee Journal, I was hard at work negotiating with WFDD to give me a slot for a music show. It has still not come to fruition, but in the meantime, we began to pursue my longtime dream of sharing ideas in a journal format.
I had been working on a book about my love and admiration for the art of singer/songwriters. I wrote and rewrote, but something was always wrong. I could tell you now why it felt that way, but it might bore you with detail about how and why it was not fulfilling my expectations.
I would rather talk about my reader friend's observation. It did not surprise me at all. I see clearly that I have been pursuing literature and music on parallel paths for most of my life, since my mother read to us and played light classical music. A perfect example, I think, is a composition called The Moldau by the Czech master Smetana. It paints a musical picture of the famous river. A poet might have done the same with words. Go even further back, and we would have found "balladeers" roaming the European landscape telling stories in song because there was not yet adequate written language. Art of all kinds is truly tied together as an expression of the human spirit.
I simply was a listener and a singer and one who read voraciously. Being fascinated by the joining of poetry and music just came naturally (and clearly nurtured by my mother's love for each). Having refused, regrettably, to take piano lessons, she gave me a baritone ukulele. I moved on to a guitar and became a "folksinger" and member of that might have, if things had gone differently, pursued a musical career. Songs have been a part of my heart and mind always.
So now, finally, I flit back and forth in the interplay of wanting to become a writer and a discriminating curator of a particular genre of music. Bless my soul, I seem to have no choice.
There are so many overlaps among music, verse, and the expressions they convey. Franz Schubert, in his few years with us, wrote symphonic pieces, chamber music, and even works for piano called "Songs Without Words" and the internal pictures they held. Gustav Mahler, a romantic at heart who was captured by the emerging "modern" world, wrote symphonies that bore little resemblance to the classical form of Beethoven and others. Rather than four movements, his long works wandered from one idea to another, and he was an innovator in inserting choral music into the orchestral landscape. They might wander for an hour or so, confounding some and turning others into amazed and adoring consumers of his style(s).
What is all of this about?
Well, sometimes when I am envisioning a new piece for the journal, song lyrics come flooding into consciousness, sometimes making me wonder if I have covered this ground elsewhere in some other language. Today's piece was inspired by the "Words That Sing" posting on Friday. I played some songs from a new album by the great North Carolina band the Steep Canyon Rangers called Next Act.
She said
For my next act, I’m not acting for anyone
Hold to the love thats held me true
For my next act, I’m gonna have me a little fun
Its been too long I’ve played the fool
Those days are done
And this…..
Oh, ain’t it a mess to see my masterpiece come spilling out over the edge for all my care and all the years
All that I can say is I just want to crawl back in bed and put it all away some days
Oh, some days swerving out of my lane and I don’t want the words to call this feeling by its name, give me someone to blame
Ah, it’s just me here alone walking around half-dead, hanging my head all day long
Some days nothing comes easy, Some days nothing’ll please me, Some days I’m just barely getting by
But right now’s the perfect time to hold my tongue before I make things worse
Reaching out for help’s not easily done But I’m learning Oh, some days
Or these:
All the names I recognize as my connections and my kin
The products of a shared imagination
And where we stand right now betrays the way it was back then
So we do the best we can based on partial information
And just when we think we’re in the clear
I look around and wonder
How the hell did we ever get here?
History will show
We make it up as we go
And the heart’s the only compass you can trust
And the way from yours to mine
It never was a straight line
It’s a tale of hope and fear and love and lust
I listen to these songs (marvelous) and then I go back and read the lyrics. They mirror my, and almost anyone's, potential feelings and concerns about trying to survive in these times.
But then I think, "I cannot hope to find words like these. Why do I even try?"
Next, I give thanks that we have been given these artists to inspire and remind us that we are in this together.
Well, that went south pretty fast — my apologies…
So yes, music heals — not by fixing everything, not by making the world simpler than it is, but by giving us a space to process our emotions, to hear a hard truth, and still receive comfort. It does not remove us from the struggle, but it reminds us that we do not enter it alone.