From the day my mom and dad brought home our first hi-fi (I was maybe 5), I have loved music. Our music repertoire was limited – seems to me Stardust was a favorite as was a Jimmy Rodgers of Honeycomb fame. Once it was in the house, my brother and sister would get 45’s to play and as they got older our LP collection grew. Looking back from the perspective of 67 years I realize how the songs we played on our Hi-Fi, at Teen Canteen and on our radios became the soundtrack of our lives. The Beach Boys, The Beatles, PPM (Peter, Paul and Mary), Paul Simon, etc. were played over and over until we needed to stock up in needles!
One night, recently, Stephen Colbert was interviewing Paul Simon and mentioned the song Slip Sliding Away. The song came on the radio in their car in 1968, and it resonated with both mother and son for different reasons. Colbert mentioned how the song touched his heart and the memory of being in the car and his mother listening to that song. There was one particular verse that resonated with his mother and her life. Colbert, with great emotion, said he remembered how his 10-year-old self, realized he was privileged to be granted a rare glimpse into his mother’s reality, something not generally revealed to 10-year-olds. Simon said he would play it for him. He did not while the show was being taped, but I hope he did when it was over.
Scarborough Faire by Simon and Garfunkel will forever be a favorite of mine, we played the album endlessly the year before I moved to PA and I experienced a seismic shift in my life. It will forever represent the times when I was truly happy in high school; excited to start my junior year, looking forward to Friday night football, an exciting combination of academics, school friends, church activities and dating. Within three months I went from a full schedule of a typical high school junior to being a new kid in school who simply did not fit in, in any shape or form. It was as if my life in Hopkinton was in full color and my life in PA was in stark black and white. At night, I would sit on my front porch waiting for the time when their signal was powerful enough to be heard in south central PA, it felt like I was lurking just outside of my old life.
I loved reading about a musician/songwriter as they explained the back story about one of my favorite songs. I would read the back of the album or an insert as the technology progressed to CD’s and tapes. I was fascinated by their experiences and how the musical piece meshed with the lyrics, often written by someone else. One of the stories I loved was about Tony Arata, a country music songwriter. I had never heard of him before I watched a documentary on Garth Brooks. Arata wrote The Dance some fifteen years before Brooks would make it his signature sign off song to his concerts. Arata said that he wrote it for a guitar, but Brooks added that haunting piano notes that introduces the piece and are repeated at the end of the song. He said it took a sweet song and made it so powerful that it surpasses the label of country music.
From the talented mind/fingers of Tony Arata:
Looking back on the memory of
The dance we shared ‘neath the stars above
For a moment all the world was right
How could I have known that you’d ever say goodbye?
And now I’m glad I didn’t know
The way it all would end, the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance I could have missed the pain, But I’d have had to miss the dance.
Yes my life It’s better left to chance I could have missed the pain, But I ‘d have had to miss the dance.
Holding you, I held everything, for a moment wasn’t I a king. If I’d only known how the king would fall, maybe, hey who’s to say, you know, I might have changed it all.
But now I ‘m glad I didn’t know the way it all would end the way it all would go.
Our lives better left to chance, I could have missed the pain, but then I would have had to miss the dance.
Maybe it is because I have lived long enough now to know that some things will never come around again. That ship has sailed as they say. And yes, there is still pain and a bittersweet memory of a pain you would never want to miss.
Lessons of life.
weftalone 