When I was 26 and newly divorced, I moved from my grown-up “married” house in Brookside, to a tiny apartment in the upstairs of a house at 48th & Holly. It was like living in a tree house. The rooms were small and the ceiling in the bathroom was so low I had to duck my head to step in to the shower. But I could lie in bed and look out my window and see nothing but trees. The branches tickled my window in the evenings and the rustling of the leaves soothed me to sleep on many lonely, anxious nights.
I have many memories of that apartment, but the one that stands before all the others was the way those tiny rooms allowed me to fall in love with music. I had always loved music, but my exposure was limited and my tastes ran mostly to top 40 hits.
I had a lot of time alone in the year after I moved and I began spending my Saturday afternoons at Penny Lane Records in Westport. I bought a “serious” CD player, tuner and speakers and spent any extra money I had on books and music. I lived alone and spent hours lying in bed reading and listening to music.
Because my apartment was so small, I could hear my music from any room. I turned it on as soon as woke up and fell asleep listening. There were times when I felt I might die from the intensity of emotion the music stirred up in me. The songs I loved, played like a soundtrack to that part of my life.
I eventually moved and bought a home not far from the tree house. It too was small, an airplane bungalow, and I could listen to my favorite songs from any room in the house. And again, I (mostly) lived alone so the music that played was always my favorite music.
I remember meeting a guy I liked and after several dates and an evening of feeling particularly connected, I invited him home to listen to my music. I am sure he had something else in mind, but I remember sitting on the floor, my CDs surrounding me, as I played one favorite song after another. I was sharing one of the most intimate parts of myself.
My music collection grew, as did my sense of connection to life through the songs I loved.
Then I met, and fell in love with, Sam and Katherine. And everything changed. I spent a lot of time with them in their house up north. It was a big house, a ranch with rooms the size of tennis courts, or so it seemed. Sam had a stereo, but you couldn’t hear the music in other rooms of the house, and if you wanted to, you had to turn the volume way up. Which was ok when I was listening to the Cowboy Junkies or Lisa Loeb, but not so ok when Katherine was listening to Britney Spears or Sam was listening to classic rock.
Then we moved into my house and although the acoustics were right again, I realized I couldn’t start their morning with Marilyn Manson, just because I was in the mood for it. And I found that after 6 years of listening to the music I loved most, it was very hard to listen to music that didn’t move me, even when it was the music that Sam or Katherine loved.
Gradually, I stopped listening. And the music that had been such an important part of that part of my life grew dusty and old. I still pulled out my old CDs from time to time, but when I listened, it was different. That sense of knowing - that sense of the song being so connected to my life, that sense that the song was my life and my life was that song – that feeling was gone.
Several months ago I saw the Leonard Cohen Movie "I'm Your Man" and I was reminded of how powerful a force music could be in my life. A friend gave me a copy of Cohen’s “10 New Songs” and another friend gave me a copy of Antony’s “You are a Bird Now” and I listened in my car to nothing else for weeks.
The music had a powerful effect on me, but it wasn’t until tonight that I remembered the brute physical force of connecting with a song. I had forgotten that feeling of being crushed and exploded into a million pieces all at the same time – all because of a piece of music.
But tonight I found a band called ShearWater. And I listened to this song, and this one, and this one. And I felt my chest rip open and a thousand white birds flew out.
