Are You Still Singing?

Some of my earliest memories are of dancing to Paul Simon’s Graceland album, featuring the rich, beautiful voices of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, my mother scolding us in mock frustration to stop jumping so the record wouldn’t skip. I would dance on a lawn with my family years later as we watched Ladysmith Black Mambazo play live. We lost Joseph Shabalala this year, the voice that was an inspiration to Mandela and created music that acted as an Anti-Apartheid force. Music has always played a powerful role in my life, punctuating each memory that makes up every chapter. From my first concert, (my parents took me and my sister to see Peter, Paul, and Mary at the Maine Civic Center), to our family’s first CD (Tracy Chapman’s self-titled album, which to this day remains one of my favorites), to driving around twisty, dirt roads in Maine replaying Peter Gabriel’s Solsbury Hill, to childhood competitions to see if we could hold a note as long as Celine Dion (of course, I’m referring to that note at the end of To Love You More), I can hardly recall a moment without the song that goes with it.

How could Sam Cooke’s (What A) Wonderful World be one of my favorite love songs, but also so vividly remind me of my first real heartbreak? How can a seemingly irredeemable day be transformed by laughter after blasting Modest Mouse’s Float On and singing at the top of our lungs? Music has shaped me in indescribable ways. As a child who grew into a woman who struggled (struggles) to love herself, Stevie Nick’s words in Gypsy, “and if I was a child, and the child was enough, enough for me to love, enough to love” are an anthem of self-compassion. As a mixed, black and white, woman trying to make meaning in a world of injustice, 2pac’s Changes is a cue to never turn a blind eye to the world’s brokenness. My heart flutters when I hear the line, “We ain’t ready to see a black president,” as I think about the baby steps of progress that made way for Obama. Yet before I take too long to celebrate, I am quickly reminded of how true his words, now more than 20 years old, still remain, particularly under the current administration.

Losing Bill Withers in the midst of today’s circumstances hit especially hard. Lovely Day can bring a smile to my face, a dance to my step, and gratitude to my heart, even on the most difficult days. It’s uncomfortable to think he won’t get the timely, in-person tribute he deserves for touching us through soulful songs such as Lean on Me or Ain’t No Sunshine. If you told me even a month ago that I would be stuck in my home for the foreseeable future, I wouldn’t have believed you. A true extrovert, home is where I retreat to when I need quiet time and space, not where I like to spend the bulk of my existence. I’ve intentionally chosen a career that allows me to work closely with people. I’ve worked hard to form strong communities of friends wherever I go. Yet here I am, day after day, night after night, at home, my ability to connect relying on a screen. This pandemic is bringing to the surface the truest things about America (and me), the disheartening and disgusting along with its beauty and strength. I want to open my eyes to see it clearly enough to fight its flaws and celebrate its successes. However, I am also realizing I need to take a step back in order to maintain my own health – for myself, for my family, for my clients, and for my friends.

In this time, music has been a constant, a reprieve from the current state of things. When I’m dancing as I fold laundry in my room to Always Alright by Alabama Shakes, it could be a regular, rainy Saturday afternoon. I’m powered through my runs by the beat of Robyn’s Dancing On My Own (a song you can’t help but move to) and for a moment it’s not that different from my weekly trips to Zumba and Orangetheory. I share a song with a friend and I’m able to share 2 minutes of normalcy, a song is shared back and I’m receiving 3 minutes of vacation. Music just moves me. I’m the girl who’s cried in the car to Jay-Z’s Hard Knock Life, the one who’s been transported in her mind to a seventies discotheque just from the first notes of ABBA’s Waterloo. Right now, I can’t go to a movie with a friend or out to eat with my sister, but I can put on a song and for a split second the world is right again.

It will sound dramatic (and as I’m prone to theatrics, it may be difficult to take at face value), but music saved my life. I was living in Chicago and had sunken to my lowest point. Work was awful and I was highly overworked, personal relationships were struggling, and I was not doing well. It had become a sort of ritual to call my sister crying. She knew I wasn’t doing well before I had discovered the full extent of it myself and one evening she called me. She told me she had an extra ticket to Florence and the Machine at Shoreline Amphitheater and she was buying me a plane ticket to California for the weekend to come to the concert with her. She made me dress in my best approximation of an outfit Florence Welch might wear (with very limited notice) as she donned a long, red wig. The tickets were terrible and we could barely see, but we danced in the dirt until our make-up had melted and our sides were splitting. I went home after that weekend full, healed in ways that only family and music can do, prepared to hold on just a little bit longer. When I’m feeling stuck, sometimes I still find myself turning to that line in Shake It Out when she sings “‘Cause I am done with my graceless heart, so tonight I’m gonna cut it out and then restart,” reminding myself that life can always start over.

I don’t know how long I’m going to be stuck inside or how much of the world will crumble or shine while I’m locked away, but I’m thankful for the magic of music. The transformation that can come from focusing on each note… The opportunities I’m given to breathe as I listen… The reminder of the battles that are worth fighting as well as the gentle nudges to take time for pause and peace…