The Healing Force Of My Life

If there is one unassailable presence in my life, one thing that remains constant there when everything else seems to change, it is music.

From the beginning, I associated music with the good things in life. The love expressed to me by parents, siblings, relatives and friends alike was connected to it. As were key moments of my education and my emotional growth as a person. There seemed to me to be, then, as there is now, that there was no gaping emotional wound or bout of insecurity (of which I have had both and many) that it could not heal. If only by keeping the wolves at the door of my mind away for a little while.

Making your own music, by singing and/or playing a musical instrument, if you know how to, is among the most empowering things you can do as an individual in a universe that tends to favor conformity over anything else. From the minstrels, troubadours and bards of the Middle Ages, to the diverse panoply of figures that dot the musical landscape today, musicians have always seemed to be in touch with the secrets of the universe that other people can’t understand even if they tried. They don’t always share them with us, but when they do, you really come away with your whole life changed. It is religion without the political and metaphysical baggage, reduced to a pure, emotional core that allows anybody to access it easily. Even when you don’t speak the same language as the singers and players, you can still appreciate it when the band starts kicking up its heels- and makes you kick yours up, too.

My life has been changed- multiple times- in this way. Always for the better.

This is why I spend so much time listening to it- every day. Why I spend a goodly percentage of what little money comes my way acquiring it, and poring over it constantly, trying to figure out what the lyrics mean while the band swings, sways and rocks behind the singer delivering them. Why I think lyricists are some of the greatest poets who ever lived, and that their best words are as good as anything Byron, Keats, Shelley, Blake, Wordsworth or Coleridge ever wrote. And why I always tell people- or want to tell them- about what I’m listening to as of late.

Because it is one of the very few things in the world everyone knows and understands. Regardless of what kind, and what artists you think are the kings and queens of it.

Every country in the world- even every social group and sub-group within our own- has its own indigenous musical traditions. Including its own musical instruments, and its own way of singing. That’s usually what the haters target when they want to destroy them. Think about how the American slaveholders of the 18th and 19th centuries banned their slaves from doing anything musical that wasn’t religious in nature. Or, for that matter, how the Indigenous people of North America in particular, but also elsewhere in the world, were denied the right to speak the very languages and have a connection to the very traditions that made them unique. Therefore, they were denied access to the spectacular ways they once used music to unify themselves. In Canada, my home country, that had devastating consequences that we only now understand and are trying to make amends for. Often by giving them a chance to use their hypnotic drum beats, haunting vocal cadences, and wicked terpsichorean abilities in public any chance we- or, more often now, they- get.

To say nothing of the many diverse musical traditions that sprung out of that aforementioned American slaveholding empire, but transcended and ultimately wrecked it. Of the many singers, songwriters and musicians I deeply admire, the vast majority of them were or are African Americans. Very few people on Earth have undergone as deep and as brutal the kinds of sufferings and humiliations as they have in the past and, unfortunately, still do now. Yet, at the same time, those sufferings and humiliations became the fuel for a massive emotional blast furnace, which created music that has changed the entire world more than a few times. Be it ragtime, jazz, R&B, soul, funk, rap or plain and simple blues. Despite being a believer in the value of humility, I think that, if we are to view some people as being above others in some way, it would be these folks. Particularly considering how ridiculous and terrible some of their personal lives were or are. As one of them famously put it, all they want from us is R-E-S-P-E-C-T. And, I for one, will give it to them- always.

As I will many of the great modern bards that I can be proud to say hail from my country. Canadian literature has had many eminent poets in its ranks over the years, so it’s no surprise Canadian music has poets among its ranks as well. Bruce Cockburn, whose calm Bruce Banner appearance and manner belies the Incredible Hulk-like ferocity of his lyrics. Gordon Lightfoot, who always remains thoughtful and meditative, whether he’s singing about what could happen if you could read his mind, or chronicling the stormy demise of a Lake Superior ore boat named for an obscure Milwaukee politician. Leonard Cohen, whose words and deeds are the ultimate mash-up between burning masculine romanticism and Zen spirituality. Joni Mitchell, combining a deceptive lyrical simplicity with an ability to make any musical genre turn tricks for her. Burton Cummings, who can go from aggressive masculine rocker on one song to vulnerable grown-up boy on the next like no one else. Neil Young, whose whiny singing voice and anti-Establishment politics effectively disguise the profundity and perennial experimentation apparent in the lyrics and music of his best songs, and prevent you from appreciating them fully except at a historical distance. And so, so many others. Most of the folks I just spoke about, if only briefly, got action outside of the North, but not all of them do, and some of them can be just as good sometimes.

And it flows into other aspects of my life as well. Another great love of my life- the animated film and television series- has been living a happy common-law relationship with music ever since sound and image were first successfully merged, and it’s one they’ve both benefitted from repeatedly. Music helped animation to change and grow, from being unconnected static images to stories fully worthy of the same kind of respect music itself deserves and gets, but is not always justly awarded. The great Disney features have almost exclusively been structured like Broadway or Hollywood musicals, with big production numbers and contemplative arias alike. It’s no surprise to me that so many of them have been as successful in their adaptation to the Great White Way as they were originally on the silver screen. What better way is there for a kid- or an open-minded adult, too- to learn how powerful music can be, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs back in the day to Frozen now.

The television variety is crawling with it, likewise, from the themes to the closing credits. A lot of the characters seem to have music in their very blood and bones. Not only can many of them carry a good tune, but some of them can play guitar, piano, drums or (in one case) saxophone with a skill and panache rivaling any and all of those instruments’ “real” players. And the producers take full advantage of that skill to drop in a number anywhere they think it fits, however incongruous it may be. Think of Hoagy Carmichael anachronistically guest-starring on The Flintstones. When Bart tricks a church congregation into singing “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” as lustily and fervently as any hymn on The Simpsons. When the Powerpuff Girls use rock and roll to fight against villainy when their super-powers fail them, by reminding us in song that love is what makes the world go round. When Peter Griffin gets everyone- and I mean everyone- in a football stadium to sing and dance with him- in razor sharp time, yet- to the unlikely strains of “Shipoopi” from The Music Man on Family Guy. And definitely every single episode of the incomparable Phineas and Ferb, where the relationship between animation and music is repeatedly consummated on a zenith level.

So, if you see me somewhere sitting down in public while a singer is singing and/or a band is playing, and I totally ignore you, please don’t mistake ignorance for rudeness.

It’s just that, like anywhere else where I listen to it, I know music will always be where the action is in my life. And I’m totally willing and prepared to accept any and all sorts of gifts it may give me, so that I’ll be a better person for it all.

Just like so many people not unlike me have, for thousands of years before and thousands of years to come.