Alexandersmap

    Category: Music

    • Into My Arms

      And I don’t believe in the existence of angels
      But looking at you I wonder if that’s true
      But if I did I would summon them together
      And ask them to watch over you
      To each burn a candle for you
      To make bright and clear your path
      And to walk, like Christ, in grace and love
      And guide you into my arms
      – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Into My Arms

      Some songs you hear take time to enter your rotation as “favorites”, but others grab you the first time you hear them. Nick Cave’s Into My Arms is the latter kind of song for me. And it’s one of those songs you don’t exactly play at parties, so I have no idea how other people feel about it, but for me it’s on that playlist I play for myself. I know I’m not the only one, you just need to look at the number of views on YouTube for this song in the many performances he’s put out there over the years to see it hits a cord for a lot of people.

      I heard an interview with Bono recently where he mentioned that Nick Cave played this song at the memorial service for Michael Hutchence in a darkened room. Bono was so deeply moved by this that the song stays close to his heart to this day. Listen to the song and imagine that moment, and you might never think of it the same way again either. It’s changed how I think of it now, hearing Bono’s story. Elevating it to a new place than before. Maybe my sharing it will change how you think of it too.

      This is a love song, first and foremost, but you know it’s more than that. This is a song about questioning it all, these stories that we all tell ourselves. And maybe acknowledging that there’s something special in the universe to have put a kindred spirit in this world and pointed us towards each other at just the right moment. Serendipity? Or something more? To say you know the answer to that only means you’ve embraced one story over another. The only story I trust in the story of today, just you and me and this crazy world we live in for now.

      Just another song on my Memento Mori playlist, as I march through this one brief life. You might think that’s a morbid thing, remembering that we all must die. I think of it as a reminder to live with grace and love in these days of light. And to celebrate our time together while it’s here. To remember, really, that we all must love.

    • A Sparkplug for the Brain in Five Songs

      If someday my mind succumbs to the debilitating fog of dementia that robs my father and so many others of their familiarity and wit, put noise-cancelling headphones over my ears, turn up the volume and play the electric guitar anthems of my youth. I don’t know nearly enough about reversing the downward slide of dementia, but I do know that music seems to help. My Dad might not remember my name, but he knows the words to his favorite country music. There’s magic in music, and it seems to remain a gift for us to the end of our days.

      I don’t know what my own future will bring, but I eat my blueberries and leafy greens and stay hydrated in hopes of keeping the pipes clean. They say a heart-healthy diet and a brain-healthy diet are the same, which seems to offer a clear path for proactive nutrition. But we never know, do we?

      I do know that nothing drew me out of my awkward teenage shell like the guitar work of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s rock music. And, just maybe, that might work again should I someday need a sparkplug for the brain. May it never be needed but as a nice throwback jolt of energy and a reminder of a time when my dad knew my name and would yell it to have me turn down the music:

      Surrender – Cheap Trick
      I can still remember listening to this song in a friend’s basement, along with, funny enough, his Kiss records.

      Unchained – Van Halen
      This performance is big, brash Van Halen at their raunchiest, and rocking the house.

      Rock You Like a Hurricane – The Scorpions
      German rock and roll that must be turned up extra loud.

      Roll With The Changes – REO Speedwagon
      One of those songs you can’t help but turn up and speed up to.

      Gloria – U2
      The band, and the performance, that stirred my Celtic soul and changed my perspective on music forever. U2 became and remains to this day my virtual house band.

    • Look at That Sky, Life’s Begun

      Don’t let me hear you say life’s taking you nowhere
      Angel
      Come get up, my baby
      Look at that sky, life’s begun
      Nights are warm and the days are young
      Come get up, my baby
      — David Bowie, Golden Years

      Attitude is everything in life, and at some point you’ve got to shake yourself loose from whatever holds you back and get going already. Even during the pandemic, a dark time for modern humanity, we hear of plenty of people who got out in the world and did something amazing. So why not now?

      If you believe the stories, David Bowie wrote Golden Years for Elvis to sing. Admittedly, that would have been a fascinating take on the song. There’s an element of sadness in the lyrics, and I can see Bowie having someone like Elvis in mind when he wrote it. I think about the Elvis of 1975, only a couple of years before he died. He felt like old news and a bit used up in the world, but he was only 42 when he died. He was dragged down by drugs and distraction, not by age.

      There’s a lesson there. Don’t get bogged down in the muck life throws at you. Focus intensely on the things you want to do in your life. For all the celebration of those who rise up, this world would rather have you consume than produce. Consumption will be the death of us all. Instead, get up and produce something of consequence.

      Lean into your dreams. Look up at that sky. Life’s just begun, Angel.

    • I Will Show Another Me

      When illusion spin her net
      I’m never where I want to be
      And liberty she pirouette
      When I think that I am free
      Watched by empty silhouettes
      Who close their eyes but still can see
      No one taught them etiquette
      I will show another me
      Today I don’t need a replacement
      I’ll tell them what the smile on my face meant
      My heart going boom boom boom
      “Hey” I said “You can keep my things,
      They’ve come to take me home.”
      – Peter Gabriel, Solisbury Hill

      Where were you when you really heard this song for the first time? Not tapping your fingers on the steering wheel while you drive hearing it, but listening to the lyrics and absorbing the weight of what Peter Gabriel was saying to the world? We all confront tough choices, and the toughest choice of all is when everything is going well and we follow the call to change anyway.

      This decision, I will show another me, is the root of change. It’s what Henry David Thoreau was saying in Walden:

      Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate… The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

      I think a person ought to read Walden every year, to gauge the changes happening within themselves. You might say the same about Solisbury Hill; you hear it differently depending on where you are in your life. Closing in on two years since the beginning of the pandemic, I hear it differently than I did a few years ago. Maybe you do too.

      The theme mirrors Bob Seger’s Roll Me Away, right down to the bird of prey weighing in on the decision the protagonist is about to make. But Solisbury Hill sneaks up on you differently. Maybe it’s the English versus the American take on life-changing moments. Roll Me Away was always a driving song, pulling you relentlessly to the freedom of the road. Solisbury Hill is about a very distinct moment in Peter Gabriel’s career, when he decided to leave Genesis and begin a solo career. And in writing it he blazed a trail for everyone following him in making their own choices in life.

      Should you listen to that voice, trust imagination, and take the leap.

    • The Changes You Take Yourself Through

      Everybody needs a change
      A chance to check out the new
      But you’re the only one to see
      The changes you take yourself through
      – Stevie Wonder, Don’t You Worry About A Thing

      In New England, October is the time of tangible, visible change. The world transforms around you in such strikingly obvious ways that even the most inward-facing among us look up and see it. The days get shorter and darker, the air crisp and demanding of attention, and of course the leaves paint the landscape in an explosion of color. No wonder this is the time of year most people who live here point to as their favorite.

      It seems a good time to celebrate change. The incremental changes we see around us are also happening within us. We grow incrementally better or worse, depending on our focus and applied effort. And because we’re humans you might make tangible progress in one area while you slide a bit sideways in another. Such is life.

      When you write and publish every single day you force yourself to become a keen observer. And you become more efficient in putting thought to paper (or onto the screen and whatever database in the Cloud they take up residence in). Sometimes you’re the only one to see the changes you take yourself through, and sometimes a percentage of the world takes notice. The only part that’s important is that you take yourself through it to see where you go next.

      Change. We get so caught up in getting there that we forget to celebrate here. Dance in the moment that you recognize that life is this short wonderful eruption of thought and emotion and transformation. Maybe turn the volume up a bit more today. For there’s urgency in the air. Celebrate where you are. You’ve come so far already.

    • You Only Need to Know

      “Great minds have purpose, others have wishes. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them.” – Washington Irving

      Washington Irving was right on the mark with this observation. Imagine if he’d lived to see people staring at their phones all day? There are so many distractions today, and never enough rising above them. So it seems anyway.

      But there are plenty of people living with purpose. People who are driven to succeed in the path they’ve chosen for themselves. The trick is to find that purpose and focus on it like your very life depended on it. For in so many ways, it does.

      You know it’s up to you, anything you can do
      And if you find a new way
      Well, you can do it today
      Well, you can make it all true
      And you can make it undo
      You see, ah-ah-ah, it’s easy, ah-ah-ah
      You only need to know
      – Cat Stevens, If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out

      You only need to know what you want to do, your purpose, and then, well, you can do it today. At least begin to do it today. And isn’t that the tricky part? To stop telling yourself stories about what you are and go write a new story. Rise above the wishes and distractions and misfortunes that life stirs in our little pot and see just how far you can take this purpose of yours.

      Injecting clever quotes and catchy tunes into your day is one thing, but finding purpose and following it are another. The point here is that there’s so much noise in our lives that we never really listen to hear what our calling is. If you aren’t listening, you aren’t focused. And you miss the purpose as life noisily passes you by.

      Listen. Focus. Find a new way (yes, you can do it today).

    • More Than Just Names

      Sleeping beauty awakes from her dream
      With her lover’s kiss on her lips
      Your kiss was taken from me
      Now all I have is this
      – Bruce Springsteen, Countin’ On A Miracle

      Twenty years. I’m still here, just as I was that day, but everything has changed. What seemed important on the morning of September 11, 2001 disappeared from my mind when I heard Howard Stern, of all people, explaining what was happening at that moment in New York as I drove to a job that would be impossible to focus on for a long time afterwards.

      The world has changed since 9/11. We’ve all grown hardened by violence and war and angry rhetoric. It was our generation’s Pearl Harbor, and we were ready to lash out at all who would assault us so boldly. In so many ways we’re still lashing out, but much of it has turned inward. That unified country in the days after 9/11 is far from it now.

      We all felt the impact of that day, but nobody felt it more than the families and friends of those who died that day. Bruce Springsteen wrote the album The Rising shortly after 9/11. The lyrics quoted above resonate more for me than any other, representing all that was taken from so many that day. And it plays in my head now, twenty years after that day. As the bells ring in remembrance. And the names, so many names, are spoken one after another.

      During the Super Bowl in 2002, just months after 9/11, U2 performed as the halftime show. They sang MLK and Where The Streets Have No Name with a white banner scrolling the names of those lost on 9/11. I still can’t watch it without getting choked up, and I dismiss anyone who might venture to declare any other performance at a Super Bowl as more powerful or significant.

      These songs will always be my 9/11 soundtrack. They remind us that these were more than just names. They are lives interrupted.

    • The How of Things

      “We humans live in two worlds. First, there is the outer world of appearances—all of the forms of things that captivate our eye. But hidden from our view is another world—how these things actually function, their anatomy or composition, the parts working together and forming the whole. This second world is not so immediately captivating. It is harder to understand. It is not something visible to the eye, but only to the mind that glimpses the reality. But this “how” of things is just as poetic once we understand it—it contains the secret of life, of how things move and change.”
      – Robert Greene, Mastery

      You might read a paragraph like the one above with the eye of a scientist, seeing the truth through the lens of composition of matter and chemical reaction and such. You might read it through the eyes of a politician or businessperson, immediately grasping the backroom deals and favors that occur well before the headlines catch the attention of the public. Or you might read it with the eye of an artist, seeing the structure of the words themselves and how they spin magic in their unique assembly on the page. There is indeed poetry in the how.

      There’s a light that dawns when you see this other side of things, this secret sauce of how and why things are the way they are. Lessons learned through experience and intelligent observation and time invested in the questions of how. Some people receive the gift of a curious mind early in life and immerse themselves in the wonder of how, but most of us are too dazzled by the sleight of hand to focus on how the magician does the trick.

      There’s magic in the how. Watch Paul McCartney at a mixing board isolating bits of a Beatles song and you learn the intricate composition and experimentation that went into crafting it. The magic seems to sparkle on the surface, but it’s much deeper than you might hear in a first listen. The final product is an illusion built on layers of sonic novelty and gumption. The joy lies in discovering things you missed the first dozen times you heard a song.

      The magic lies in the mix. What we see on the surface is only the tip of the iceberg. Dive deeper into the how.

    • Follow the Trail and Scatter Light

      Man dreams one day to fly
      A man takes a rocket ship into the sky
      He lives on a star that’s dying in the night
      And follows in the trail, the scatter of light
      – U2, In A Little While

      There are moments in an album or a book or an evening when you recognize the magic. Emotion wells up in you, stirring and amplifying feelings, sending you to another place. A higher place, maybe, or a darker place should the moment direct you that way. I keep climbing to higher places, hoping the view is better. Hoping I’ll become better in the process. And some of it ends up here in this blog.

      U2 hit me a few times over with All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Opening with the hit, dropping in a mournful homage to Michael Hutchence and then the heart pounding Elevation. This was the U2 I’d missed in their experimental days of the late 90’s. These were songs that stuck with you. Ear worms if you will. And then they hit you with Walk On, which grabbed me by the throat waiting for a flight from LA to Boston. When Bono starts singing “Home, hard to know where it is if you’ve never had one” while sleepily waiting for a red eye flight home… well, I’ll never hear the song the same again.

      For all that, the second half of the album is admittedly weaker. And for me, In A Little While became the unconscious end. For it was this song that got that emotion welling, that stirred and amplified those feelings. When Bono sings “Slow down my bleeding heart” I’m right with him, and I know it hit others the same way. That’s the power of a moment.

      Bono stated at one of the concerts U2 recorded that Joey Ramone’s family told him In A Little While was the song that he listened to in hospice, which changed the song for Bono, the guy who wrote it, from a hung over dolt going home at the end of the night to something bigger. Something more meaningful. I never heard the song as anything but soul-stirring, which just goes to show, art might begin with the artist, but it becomes whatever the audience wants it to be.

      I think about that as I write. About reaching moments of emotional connection in my writing. About crafting something of depth and substance, something that amplifies that nugget of desire or fear or love in your soul. Surely I’m a work in progress, but still climbing. Following the trail and scattering light. Still dreaming of flying.

    • What Song Do You Hum to Yourself?

      I want to go all over the world
      And start living free
      I know that there’s somebody who
      Is waiting for me
      I’ll build a boat, steady and true
      As soon as it’s done
      I’m going to sail along in the dreams
      Of my dear someone
      – Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Dear Someone

      There are bigger, more far-reaching songs on the classic album Time (The Revelator), but this one lingers in my head. It likely began with my interest in all things sailing and boats and travel. Or the lullaby rhythm of the song, which comes in handy when you have young children. I no longer have a boat of my own, having sold it off in relief several years ago. For that matter, I no longer have young children, as they begin their own adventures in places all over the world.

      When you want to start living free, what exactly do you want to be free of? Work? Or the life you’ve built around yourself, sturdy and strong, that locks you into a place and time in your brief go on this planet? Are we shaking off commitments and relationships of proximity in favor of the freedom of travel, or are we running from something in ourselves? Or maybe we’re seeking something that we aren’t finding where we currently find ourselves? Fair questions to ask before you set out in your vessel of choice. But never forget that you have that agency.

      A revelator is someone who reveals the will of God to the rest of us. We all decide what this God character is in our lives. We all have our stories about the world and our place in it. There is no better revelator than time, for it reveals within each of us the truth about who we are and where we want to go. Sometimes it reveals that what you’ve wanted most is what you’ve built around yourself. And that, maybe, what you’re seeking is already here.

      Every day I wake up
      Hummin’ a song
      But I don’t need to run around
      I just stay home
      And sing a little love song
      My love, to myself
      If there’s something that you want to hear
      You can sing it yourself
      – Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Everything Is Free

      The world will open up once again, should we ride out this time and meet it. And then what? What boats are we building? Where do you go from here? Time will surely reveal it all to us, but let’s always remember that we have a bit of a say in the matter too. Over time, if we’re lucky, we learn to listen to the songs we hum to ourselves.