Watch this. Listen with your whole self open. Let it wash you away.

I dare you to resist…

There’s a fire starting in my heart,
Reaching a fever pitch and it’s bring me out the dark.
Finally I can see you crystal clear
Go ahead and sell me out and I’ll lay your ship bare.

See how I’ll leave, with every piece of you
Don’t underestimate the things that I will do.

There’s a fire starting in my heart,
Reaching a fever pitch and it’s bring me out the dark.

The scars of your love, remind me of us.
They keep me thinking that we almost had it all
The scars of your love, they leave me breathless
I can’t help feeling
We could have had it all
Rolling in the deep
You had my heart inside your hand
And you played it
To the beat

Baby I have no story to be told
But I’ve heard one of you and I’m gonna make your head burn,
Think of me in the depths of your despair
Making a home down there as mine sure won’t be shared

The scars of your love, remind you of us.
They keep me thinking that we almost had it all
The scars of your love, they leave me breathless
I can’t help feeling
We could have had it all

Rolling in the deep
You had my heart inside your hand
And you played it
To the beat

We could have had it all
Rolling in the deep
You had my heart inside your hand
But you played it
With a beating

Throw your soul threw every open door
Count your blessings to find what you look for
Turn my sorrow into treasured gold
You pay me back in kind and reap just what you sow

We could have had it all
We could have had it all
We could have had it all
Rolling in the deep
You had my heart inside your hand
And you played it to the beat

We could have had it all
Rolling in the deep
You had my heart inside your hand

But you played it,
You played it,
You played it
You played it to the beat

Words & Music By Billy Joel

In every heart there is a room
A sanctuary safe and strong
To heal the wounds from lovers past
Until a new one comes along

I spoke to you in cautious tones
You answered me with no pretense
And still I feel I said too much
My silence is my self defense

And every time I’ve held a rose
It seems I only felt the thorns
And so it goes, and so it goes
And so will you soon I suppose

But if my silence made you leave
Then that would be my worst mistake
So I will share this room with you
And you can have this heart to break

And this is why my eyes are closed
It’s just as well for all I’ve seen
And so it goes, and so it goes
And you’re the only one who knows

So I would choose to be with you
That’s if the choice were mine to make
But you can make decisions too
And you can have this heart to break

And so it goes, and so it goes
And you’re the only one who knows

My current musical obsession. I need a capo.

By Ray Lamontage

Are you still in love with me, like the way you used to be
Or is it changing?
Does it deepen over time, like the river that is winding
Through the canyon?

Are you still in love with her, Do you remember how you were
Before the sorrow?
Are you closer for the tears, or has the weight of all the years
Left you hollow?

Are we strangers now?
Like the Ziegfeld Gal and the Vaudeville show?

Are we strangers now?
Like Rock and Roll and the Radio?
Like Rock and Roll and the Radio…

I can see you lyin’ there, tying ribbons in your hair
And pullin’ faces.
I can feel your hand in mine, though we’re living separate lives
In separate places.

Are we strangers now?
Like the Ziegfeld Gal and the Vaudeville show?

Are we strangers now?
Like Rock and Roll and the Radio?
Like Rock and Roll and the Radio…

All these white lies,
Hanging like flies on the wall.

Hard-wired, road-tired,
Counting curtain calls and waiting,
Waiting for the axe to fall.

Are you still in love with me, like the way you use to be
Or is it changing?
Does it deepen over time, like the river that is winding
Through the canyon?

Are we strangers now?
Like the Ziegfeld Gal and the Vaudeville show?

Are we strangers now?
Like Rock and Roll and the Radio?
Like Rock and Roll and the Radio…

Those songs which contain words and phrases that spell out the aching particulars of however you experience life and beauty and pain and truth.

We all have this soundtrack.; the songs that bring us immediately to a place or time or feeling. Without preamble or fanfare, we are fully and utterly lost to that moment, that emotion. And sometimes, they make no sense or they make a sense that only your insides can interpret. They are often profoundly unglamorous and leave us raw and exposed, but in the best possible way.

And today with my speakers up louder than I can usually have them at work, I heard again the line from a song that most says LOVE to me while I listen. It is contained in a song about stumbling upon love while not yet free to have it. It is not a scenario I have ever found myself in, yet it cries out with the most beautiful poignancy what I most feel… and want to feel from someone else, about love.

There have been others: they tell a story about the way my concept of love has changed

Ghost by The Indigo Girls “Of all my demon spirits I need you the most”

I always felt like this song was about being in love with the idea of someone, rather than their actual person. About idealizing someone past the point of all reason so that you could have no real hope of loving them in actuality. This is something I know well how to do. This was my idea of love when I was a sophomore in high school. It still tugs at me though…

Do What You Have to Do by Sarah McLachlan “And I have the sense to recognize that I don’t know how to let you go”

Some part of me is convinced that love has to hurt. That it isn’t real if you don’t ache for the lack of the other. Probably too large a part of me indeed. The quality of love I most readily recognize is the sort that causes me to lose myself so completely in the feeling that I become someone else as a result. the person I was before ceases to exist and so, in a very real sense I struggle with the notion of losing anyone I come to truly love, for it would result in becoming Not Me, at least Not the Me I’d been ever since falling in love had made me Someone New. Plus also, I just don’t like to let go.

Steam Engine by My Morning Jacket “Your skin looks good in moonlight, goddamn those shaky knees”

This song was just eerily appropriate for the love I was falling in at the time I first heard the song. I had never had someone so enamored of me as was the boy who was the object of my affection at the time. I had never had anyone speak with such fervor about how beautiful he thought I was; about the effect I had on him with the mere fact of my presence. This was the lesson of being adored as an aspect of love. It was a good lesson.

Crash by Dave Matthews Band “Hike up your skirt a little more, and show your world to me”

Far from being smutty, I find this line to be singularly romantic. It acknowledges the fundamental vulnerabilty inherent in revealing oneself this way. The faith, entire and unblemished, that accompanies such a gesture. It is an intoxicating moment, to feel that trust for someone else, and to feel it expressed toward you as well.

And now…

Challengers by The New Pornographers “Whatever the mess you are, you’re mine”

This, oh this, is what I have come to believe is really what love is about. Not that we do not see, or that we are made perfect by our love, but rather that we are seen, and known, and absolved, and loved nevertheless. I think I like this notion best. It feels truer, and wiser and more likely, when compared to the illusions and self-sacrifice of the past.

And I wonder, as I always do, about the quality of love that others feel. How it is sounded out across their lives. What resonates inside of them and carries them forward on waves of song…

The tiny midnight caravan
Made its way across the black hills
As I watched from a distance
The slow-going glow
Their wandering you know
Made me pine
For the lamplight
Where you lie

If I took you darling
To the caverns of my heart
Would you light the lamp dear?
Would you light the lamp dear?
And see fish without eyes
Bats with their heads
Hanging down towards the ground
Would you still come around
Come around?

I believe in you
In your honesty and your eyes
Even when I’m sloshing
In the muck of my demise
A large part of me
Is always and forever tied
To the lamplight
Of your eyes, of your eyes

When I was a senior in high school, our conductor elected to have our choir perform a particularly ambitious piece for our state championship tournament. It was so not only for it’s difficulty, which was acknowledged as generally well beyond the capacities of the average high school choir (which we were decidedly not) but also because the piece was quite new; it had been written within the previous several years and the conductor was still living. This chorale also included a solo of a particularly demanding sort; a soprano had to maintain one constant note throughout the entire piece. This tone had to be sung with great sensitivity to nuance and exacting control. More, the singer had to manage with one voice, through an entire chorus of seventy others not to overpower, but to pierce.

Dr Uphaus told me he had never even considered anyone else for the job.

And so we went to state. And we didn’t win. But, one of our adjudicators was Dr Bruce Brown who was at that time the musical director at Portland State University. He made a point to compliment us on the execution of such a challenging piece of music. He also told us that the composer Arvo Part* was coming to Portland with his choir to perform THE VERY SONG with the Portland State Choir at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, and should we so choose, we were welcome to join them.

So, I and a few of my cohorts decided that would be swell. We toddled on down to PSU for 3 or 4 practice sessions. On the first of these Dr Brown cast around the room and said

“Is the young lady that sang the solo for state here in the group?”

I raised my hand, slightly terrified.

“Oh, grand. None of my singers can quite manage it. You’ll help us practice, yes?”

Of course I would.

Over the next few practice sessions, I just naturally assumed that M. Part would be select one of his own singers to perform the coveted solo. It turned out, rather, that he had wanted to leave that honor to Dr Brown, his host. When he was preparing us the night before the performance, Dr Brown turned to me with complete aplomb and said

“And naturally Autumn will be managing the solo as usual.”

I was completely, utterly, and in every way paralyzed by this pronouncement. I had not prepared myself in any way for this possibility, and I was in a paroxysm of terror in anticipation of it. I sat there in my plastic chair for ten full minutes after the larger group had broken up and wandered away, gripping the sides till my knuckles were white and my breath came back, though in gasps. It had taken all of  my will and every bit of my strength to stand up at state, with my own dear choir at my back, and lift my voice to this purpose. To do so instead, with hundreds of strangers (most older than myself and some professionals at their trade) and no less than the composer of the piece to witness was beyond reckoning. For you see, I had near crippling stage fright. Don’t laugh, It is completely true.

And so. I had to approach Dr. Brown and tell him that though I was deeply honored by his confidence in me, I could not redeem his choice by accepting it. I was too scared, my voice would not rise as it should, and I would fail him. He tried his best to change my mind, but I refused his persistence and cried over my mortification. He let me go, expressing his deep regret, not only for the performance, but for me. He knew then, as I did not, how much I would eventually lament my choice. Someone else sang the solo. The show went on without me entirely. I couldn’t even bring myself to go, I was so ashamed.

And in many ways, I still am.

I am not a person who lives with many regrets. I fuck up, things go wrong, I learn from them and usually see these detours with some equanimity. This too, taught me something tremendously valuable; I am afraid and I might falter, but I forge ahead nevertheless. In truth, this has probably lead to more emotional pain than any other philosophy I subscribe to, but I do not ever find myself dwelling on how things might have gone, should my courage have not failed me.

*There needs to be an umlaut over that a, but I can’t figure it out.

There will come a time,

you’ll see, with no more tears.

And love will not break your heart,

but dismiss your fears.

Get over your hill and see

what you find there.

With grace in your heart

and flowers in your hair…

Mumford & Sons~

Just a little prayer, set to music. I am ready for this storm to be over.

Amen

I am not well-rounded. I am more like one of those weird dice you use for D&D that have big flat sides to fall on that are kinda hard to roll. I don’t have a broad variety of skills, but rather a few things at which I am particularly good.

My mother tells me I could sing before I could talk. That nights when I was 7 or 8 months old, she could hear me making a sighing noise from my crib, little wordless tunes. Nothing else I can do gives me as much pleasure. It lights me up inside and dispels the darkness all around me.

When I am feeling especially in need of something beautiful I will go find a spot with the kind of accoustics you used to only find in church; echoing, ringing, enveloping. I will lift my voice until the sound rolls over and through me raising the hair on the back of my neck and sending shivers through my skin.

Heathen that I am, it’s rather ironic that my voice is best suited for the cathedral. Likewise, I am not much a fan of opera, but I have a Big Voice and a very high range. A vocal coach once marvelled that I could sing several notes higher than the higest not that anyone bothers to write. That capacity to reach those heights has diminished some with age, but a few years ago a friend of mine was making an album and asked me to sing for her. There was a particular sustained note that would overlay parts of the chorus and it was far too high for her range. She had been very generous with her time and helping me record some of my own music, so I was more than happy to oblige. Later, after she had mastered the whole record she presented me with a copy, she told me that all the while she was sequencing the vocals, hers would come through the mixer as a somewhat jagged and uneven line but that when she put my voice through it made a perfect sine wave. This made me giddy.

I sing in the car, I sing at work, I sing at the gym, while I shop, and when I’m riding the bus or walking down the street. Occasionally people look at me with a quizzical or annoyed expression, but for the most part I am happy to say, other people seem to enjoy it when I sing too. Lucky me.

During the actual awesome 80′s I was a bit of a cultural retard. We were pretty much dirt poor. We got the government cheese and peanut butter. We also did not see movies very often (I had a long list of films from this decade that certain people were appalled I had not seen; working on it one Alien movie at a time) only rarely had a car, never went on vacation, and didn’t have a telephone in the house until I was about 13. Moreover, my parents, god bless them, had what I now recognize to be less than totally sophisticated taste in music. Mom’s love ofZeppelin and The Beatles is totally understandable, but Andrew’s passionate fondness for Firehouse still leaves me sort of mystified.

It was a lot of Foreigner, Journey, Pat Benatar, and Metallica around the house. On cassette. I mostly wanted to listen to stuff that I could sing, and with the notable exception of the boys And Justice For All, I was well satisfied by the situation at the time. I had no idea that other FAR MORE AWESOME kinds of music existed. But then…

I went to high school and met people who were not so deprived. I was introduced to all manner of movies and books and music I had no notion about in my young life. I vividly recall taking home Pretty Hate Machine on tape and seeing the look of fascination turning to disgust and rage when Andrew heard

And the devil wants to fuck me in the back of his car

come larking out of the speakers. That was a liberating moment, let me tell you. Though I knew, even then, it wasn’t so much the reference to the devil that bothered Andrew as the homoeroticism implied. Apparently fighting off dudes at shower time in county left him a little tetchy about the subject.

Even admitting my dim understanding of pop culture it is hard to know how I had come by the impression that The Cure was a speed-death metal band of Pantera’s ilk. But I had. And so I was sure to hate them. And whevenever anyone suggested we should listen to The Cure, I objected vociferously (as was my strident way in those days; believe it or not, I’ve mellowed considerably) and thus managed never to actually hear  The Cure until I was parked in front of MTV one evening and the seminal LoveSong  came on.

I still consider this to be one of the best songs in existence. And in the way of all codgers, when it was remade recently by Jack Off Jill, I was deeply offended. This song was perfect. It needed nothing, and was diminished by tampering.

Even still, I didn’t listen to the whole album until about 6 years ago, when I was feeling particularly sad and lonesome and isolated. I decided to adopt the attitude Paul Simon proclaims

I have my books and my poetry to protect me

I always expand it to include music. It seems like such a sane and enriching strategy, but doesn’t work for shit. I suppose my readers have this failure to thank for the material they are enjoying(?) now, but still.

At any rate, the opening strains of Plainsong  became a cue to my battered heart, to accept a small respite in the form of a musical analgesic. And all the rest that followed was a beautiful plaintive reminder that everyone suffers, that I am not so singular in my pain or my longings, and I somehow found this comforting. There are moments dark and bright, but never lacking an essential communicativity. It is a hand reach out toward you, rendered in song.

This album made being melancholy more tolerable by glamorizing it just enough to make it seem like a choice, rather than a condition from which I could not escape. I understand explicitly now, that this is what goth is all about; embracing the darkness such that it cannot overwhelm you. The owl tattooed on my spine is testament to the idea that embracing pain can make it beautiful and instructive, rather than simply something to be endured to no end. The music on this record is truly a aural manifestation of this same truth.

My favorite of their songs is called “One Misty Moisty Morning” and is about the seduction and eventual marriage of a milkmaid. It is a romp, quick-paced and utterly charming. If ever I marry again, you can be sure this song will play at my reception to riotous laughter and unbridled delight. Maybe, just mine, but still. How can one resist a song wherein the lover admits “with many idle phrases I stroked her double chin, singing how-de-doo, and how-de-do, and how-de-do again!” When Hodie was little, she would clamor to hear this one

“Play HOW DE DOO MAMA!!!”

and then we would join hands and spin around the living room singing to each other at the tops of our lungs. I still feel the urge to do this whenever I hear it, though she is now much more mature than I am and just gives me a tolerant look when I holler

“HOW DE DOOOO!!!!”

They are also moderately renowned for their redition of “Gaudete” which is a classic and hauntingly beautiful Christmas carol performed flawlessly a capella. It regularly appears on compilations of the best carols ever, and justifiably so. When, on occasion, I go to listen to my voice echo in the silences, I will often choose this as my means of filling the quiet.

For a stark and unusual insight into the political climate in Great Britain during the reign of George V we have “Cam Ye O’er Frae France” at least, as much insight as one can have with the admixture of Old and modern English employed in the lyrics.

Each of these songs is posessed of a particular and wonderful energy, no less “All Around My Hat” which is a cautionary tale about the costs of a romance with a distant and possibly fickle lover. A rollicking tune and matter of fact emotional tenor make this song both sweet and slightly wry, just as the best romances are.

I love hearing these songs. They lift my spirits and send shivers through my body. They are enlivening and a pleasure to listen to, and even more to sing. Whether or not Hodie will spin around with me while I do.