In A Music House

My youngest son came to visit. This in itself was a grand occasion. I hadn’t seen him in the flesh for 16 months – though we do have the advantage of Duo Video calls and Instagram. We hiked. We ate. We talked. The kids pulled out the mandolin and guitar and I sat on the piano stool and luxuriated.

Soon I exclaimed, “Oh! It is wonderful to live in a music house!”

My 31-year-old daughter looked at me blankly, “But Mom, we have always lived in a music house.” Now that she mentions it, this is true for her – and for her brother(s). She grew up in a home where the acoustic piano was in use not only for family pleasure, but for the teaching of countless piano students. Frequently, both guitar and piano rehearsed together for the occasional music and worship gig. I taxied them to marching band and chorale rehearsals and performances. And yes, I treasure the memory of the night I sat down at the piano to relax and my pre-teen son crawled under the bench, curled up against the piano, basked in the vibration of the strings. Even when the kids flew the nest and moved out on their own, housing was with other band members – in the rehearsal house. Music was expected. Rehearsal required.

My daughter holds the lease now and I am the roommate in my current domicile for an indefinite period of time. I got the blank look again the other day when I expressed my reticence to embark on vocal exercises with neighbors so close or to play the piano and practice guitar while she reads and writes in the adjoining room.

“Mom,” she remonstrated, “when I lived with the band it was expected you practice your instrument two hours a day in addition to band rehearsals. When everyone plays more than one instrument and practices two hours a day, the projects are going to overlap. Get used to it.”

Sheesh, and I feel like I am encroaching when I woodshed for a few minutes, play piano for an hour, practice guitar 30 minutes and try to wrangle the bass for fifteen.

Yes, my children have always lived in a music house. Their roommates have been fellow band members.

Thank goodness they have never known the poverty of living with roommates who have a television running every waking moment and who, rather than cooperating to schedule times of silence for piano practice, simply turn the volume up to hear the telly over the piano.

It was not like that in the house I grew up in. When I was growing up, many years we didn’t even have a television – and the times we did, it was never allowed on Sunday. Instead of television, we practiced our instruments. And on Sundays, we played hymns.

 

The memories we lost in 2016

Nineteen years since I have seen him, yet the face in the photos is so real I can hear his voice, remember his manners, sense his body heat emanating from the mixing board, read his language. Harvey has been dead for three years, but I didn’t find out about it until 2016, so it’s been a shock getting used to his absence these past few months. Harvey was nine years younger than me. He is not supposed to be dead and me alive. The last time I talked to him was by phone. Dallas to Denver, long distance. He was getting married, he said. Honeymooning in Colorado, he said. Did he need to rent a four-wheel drive to make it to Georgetown safely? That was 18 years ago. His eulogy said he was married for 15 years before his death. I found the video of his funeral online. I recognized several of the photos in the section titled early years – the ones taken during the brief years we worked together. Wrote music. Recorded music. Wrote musicals. Directed children’s musicals. Those years are still real to me. Moments of success and fulfillment. And that is how I found out Harvey had passed. I went looking for him via Google one night. My musical life had taken yet another U-turn, I was playing in a band, reconnecting with a musical acquaintance from 1984 and I found myself wanting to reconnect with Harvey of 1996. I left contact information on the website of the DJ service he used to run. His former business partner got back with me and broke the news. Harvey is gone. Who will validate my memories? Harvey’s widow had barely entered the scene when I exited for Colorado in 1997. She knows nothing of those years we spent as musical colleagues in shared studio space, though pictures of his individual musical successes proliferate.

2016 has been a year of loss for so many. When you lose someone, you lose a part of your memories. I am aging, increasingly losing more extended family members and high school peers. Who would have thought learning of the loss of a cowriter with whom I had lost contact would come as such a jolt? But it does. We are all intrinsically connected – especially those with whom we have made music. There is no going back. There is only forward. Treasure the music you make today. Treasure the people with whom you make music. Sing a new song every day.

Keep On Making Music

Have I said recently that I raise young musicians? They are all grown up now and each responsible and laudable in his or her own right for musical expertise. I can no longer take credit for their virtuosity. What a joy to know that each of my children travels through life making substantive music; all the while keeping body and shelter viable through creative endeavor.

And some of those young musicians go on to perform with the big names. Son Philip spent four years with Colorado Children’s Chorale. He sang with some well-knowns and he also soloed on the Boettcher Concert hall stage at the Denver Performing Arts Center.