Let the Music Play

I have opted over these many years to build an insular world, one that extended only to immediate family, and in a more granular sense an interior space of only me--for all of us I suppose this is the case. Even when home, if not with my kids, much of my time has been spent in my head with music. As I am sure I have written about before, I suppose because of my mom's influence and the era I grew up in, singer songwriters have been everything. From Cole Porter to the Carter Family, Lucinda Williams to Led Zeppelin, Mary Black to Mazzy Star, and on and on, I have lived in my head their music and lyrics wrapped around my thoughts, and providing structure to my memories.

Nancy Griffith died of cancer during the COVID epidemic, as did John Prine (he of COVID after a battle with cancer). I discovered both during the early years Jenny and I were together. Around that same time I discovered Kate Wolf's work at a boheme apartment Jenny was housesitting at right next to the Safeway I used to work at on 15th and John. Wolf herself had died of cancer back in 1986 after a brief career of extraordinary creativity. 

If I were about screenwriter, rather than rely on a team to create the soundtrack of my movie, I would rely on my memories to tell me what was appropriate. Music used to beso integral to my remembering and my life experience, that I could hear a pop tune from the first 20 years of my life and tell you the year the song was released and my memories connected to the song. Around 1988, when Michelle Shocked released Short, Sharp, Shocked and Tracy Chapman dropped her eponymous album, I stopped listening to the radio, probably for about 20 years--to my detriment with regard to memory. It isn't that I don't remember things, but my purchase of a car CD player meant the radio was irrelevant. Nerd that I am, because again, I spent most of my time alone during those years or with Jenny, I found new music by reading about it in The Village Voice or talking to the guys at Orpheum record store on Capitol Hill. So, while I can tell you I bought my first Sarah Vaughan album in April of 1990, the week she died, assisted by then KCMU host and Orpheum record store clerk DJ Riz (who gave me much grief for waiting until she died to buy her music), the linkage between my memories and when they took place no longer had music to assist. It isn't that music is never anchored to a memory, I bought three of my favorite Christmas CDs (Vince Guaraldi, Frank Sinatra, Rhino's Bummed Out Christmas) at Peaches on 45th, the day that Jenny and I had our first date back in November of 1990. But that just isn't the same as hearing "My Eyes Adored You" and being transported back to 1975 and the feeling you had of the first crush in the winter 3rd grade. That is powerful, right down to the blushing cheeks.