Category: Writing

The music place

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I feel like traveling somewhere where music flows from every doorway and you can hear the dreams in the air wherever you step — not frustrated dreams but fulfilled dreams, because being in this place was the reason for dreaming. Money changers and merchants may think the music is about the money, but the value of music is in the music itself.

“I have a song, and I’m going to sing it,” the musicians declare. “Oh, I hope you love it and it touches your heart the way it touched mine, but the song exists to be heard, and now you can hear it, because I’m here to sing it and now it’s your song, too.”

Doorway after doorway, other songs emerge, until all the songs link together into one cacophonous song that shouts “Love” to all who have ears to hear.

“Music is God speaking,” one poet said.

“It soothes the savage breast,” said another.

I wish I could sing all day, and who’s to say that I can’t, or that I won’t? These songs are mine, your songs are yours, and they are ours when we share, and songs are meant to be shared.

And so the song-makers take refuge in every doorway and sing their songs, and people come to listen and join in.

I want to go to that place. I want to stay in that place all day and into the night, until I have all the music I need, and even then I will crave more, because music is love, and love is musical, and we all need love, and love is all we need.

What is that song you are singing?

Here is my song, too.

The words and the melody are dancing;

I can teach you the steps,

or you can make your own as they move you.

Funny, isn’t it, how just the thought of music has my fingers playing allegro across the page — the harmony may not be perfect but it feels just so; the illusion of perfect harmony is almost as good as the reality, or perhaps the off-key reality is as beautiful as the illusion, because it is music, and music is love, and love is all we need.

I want to make music and listen to music all day and every day. I suppose I should take time to eat and to sleep, but I want the music to keep going.

And so it does — there is music in the sighing of the wind, and rhythm in the turning of the clothes dryer, and music in the tires on the highway. The world is a symphony if we only stop to listen and hear what we’re hearing in its solemn and silly and somber and joyous totality.

What am I saying? What have I said? I will have to go back and read it, and perhaps it will look like nonsense, and perhaps it will look like common sense so obvious I should have felt it in my heart or thought it with my brain, because music is wizardly and holy and everywhere we go. 

And that is where I’m going today.

Allen the Alien, Chapter 8

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At the end of the day when Allen met Ellie and all of the other happenings, Allen sat down at the side of the bed (Yes, even aliens must rest like all other creatures) and contemplated what had unfolded. 

Was Tommy right and Ellie was a sort of villain who wanted to hold power over the flock? Or was Duckula correct in saying her intentions were for a greater good? Or were both half-right and half-wrong? There was still much to be learned about these strange creatures of Earth.

Earth! Allen still found it hard to believe he was halfway across the galaxy. He looked out the window and up to the stars. Fearless Leader or one of the scientists would probably be able to point out their home star up there in the firmament, among the millions of pinpricks of light in the sky, but Allen was only a diplomat and all he could do was stare in wonder at how vast this universe is.

And to find yet another planet capable of supporting life as they knew it! He thought about the first time his people had encountered such a world, all that time ago — how excited everyone was to learn they were not all alone in the universe and there were other planets where billions of beings lived, loved and died.

Allen and his aide TriSight would meet with Fearless Leader in the morning to discuss all that had happened so far. The clever and suspicious young one, Tommy, had cornered Allen into revealing his mission sooner than he had planned, but he could not lie when asked a direct question — it would have gone against all that he and the Federation believed. Still, the question he had journeyed all this way to answer was still not fully answered. Were these Earth beings truly ready to join the interplanetary coalition? In so many ways they were still childlike as a species. Their little game of lining up in a row was so primitive, and they had so much fun at it.

Fearless Leader needed an answer fairly soon, and Allen was not sure he had enough information to make a recommendation.

“Time enough to talk about it in the morning,” Allen said out loud, yawning. “A little rest will help clear my mind.”

And as he drifted off into dreamland, he could not have known that the events of the next day would have such a profound impact on the fate of Earth and perhaps the universe itself.

Binging the magic

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The stream giveth, and the stream taketh away. I recently discovered the TV show Nashville, which had its first run from 2012 to 2018, just in time to also discover that it was leaving Netflix after Monday, Sept. 14.

I finished Season 4 on Sunday night, and I had run out of time to binge Seasons 5 and 6 in their entirety, so I looked at the IMDb ratings and found the top-rated episodes from the final two seasons. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that most of my Monday was devoted to catching eight or nine 42-minute stories including, of course, the series finale.

I am clearly a sucker for stories about writing songs and trying to make a life making music. They built a pile of endearing and not-so-endearing characters and tossed them in a room together. Even though I’ve now seen the best of those last two seasons, I expect I’ll revisit those seasons and all of Nashville when the stream decides to give it back, someday.

Watching all that songwriting magic gave me the itch to pick up my own guitars and see what comes out. But first I need to turn off the television and get some sleep.