This magic moment, so different and so new, was like any other….and then it happened, it took me by surprise, I knew that you felt it too, by the look in your eyes…
I love the idea of magic moments. May they increase. May you have many magic moments in time. Go ahead, seek them. Chase the magic. Some are lucky enough to experience a magic moment that does, indeed, spark a lifetime relationship. But in my experience, magic moments are not “forever to the end of time.” They are moments. They burst on you unexpectedly. They sparkle. They blaze. They are gone. You return to your day job. Magic, intrinsically, is temporary.
More often than not, my magic moments are associated with the making of music.
Wait. That’s not quite true. As a person whose tag line is often, raising young musicians, I have had numerous favorite bands.
I’ve never purchased a ticket to a live concert before.
That too, is incorrect.
I paid my own way into more than a spate of excellent Colorado Children’s Chorale performances and winning Conifer High School Marching Band competitions. I have bartered, finagled and roadied my way into fog-machine-filled venues and housed bands in my basement.
Kevin at the Mesa, 2010
But those memories are long ago and far away. In every case, I was acquainted with someone in the band and the band knew me.
This is the first time I have avidly followed a band where I did not know the performers personally and none of them even knew I existed.
When I was young, I never had a heartthrob celebrity musician. No Shaun and David Cassidys. No Bobby Sherman. The Justin Biebers of my youth were unrealistic and inaccessible to me and I knew it.
Precisely because I did raise young musicians, I was privileged numerous glimpses, backstage and frontstage, of the level of excellence possible-and the price of achieving it. Because I operated mom’s taxi far and wide to deliver a youthful male soprano to multiple performance locations, because I was the one who laundered and pressed wardrobe every night during the heavy Christmas performance season, I understand what type of all-inclusive family commitment it takes to launch a superstar.
Philip (center) and Colorado Children’s Chorale wardrobe closet
I get the idea of all consuming: eat, drink and breathe music in order to be one-take wonders. It is for those reasons and more I revere Pentatonix.
I stumbled on them accidentally post Sing Off 2011 and I watched Sing Off clips over and over. I chuckled at Video Killed the Radio Star and truly came to believe The Dog Days Are Over. I pressed repeat on the deserved compliments from Shawn Stockman. It was impressed upon me that three of them were 19 – the age of my youngest son at the time. Like a high school girl, I sleuthed through biographies and YouTube and found the lead trio attended high school together. Be still my beating heart. What would it have been like to be their music teacher? To have those three in my class? YouTube also yielded the depth of multi-talent, experience and character for Avi and Kevin – the rhythm section – who are, coincidentally, my daughter’s age.
It is fitting I have a favorite band. I need excellence in my life. I will pursue it, laud it, achieve it.
To that end, I purchased a best seat available ticket to a Pentatonix concert and betook myself to Orem Utah by private motor coach (which, in the common vernacular means I drove my Subaru).
Only briefly was there quiet enough to hear the close velvet harmonies and sonorous intertwining of finely exercised and tuned vocal cords. But I did get to witness the deafening roar of the crowd and unmitigated appreciation for five über talented performers.
Excellence can and should have its reward and I am satisfied.
My first husband and I listened to (and sang) a variety of music – predominantly of the pop, MOR, easy listening genre. We were attracted to music with melodic and harmonic qualities. When our son arrived 13 months into that marriage, I swung into compose as you go, lullaby on demand mode. Maybe the grown son is passionate about rock as a rebellion – or maybe just as an extension of being rocked to sleep. I made a favorite rock-you-to-sleep lyric of the song that never ends variety. It was challenging to sing only because it ascended in pitch at each turn around.
There are times in an infant’s life they nod off to sleep peacefully and other times they fight taking a nap;
Times they wake placid and times they wake hungry, soggy, uncomfortable or discontent.
Believing music a great antidote for whatever ails you, I began to employ a wake-up repertoire as well as a go-to-sleep song list. It took the leap of a nanosecond to adapt Neil Sedaka’s “Breaking Up is Hard to Do,” to “Waking Up is Hard to Do.”
They say that waking up is, hard to do;
And I know, I know that it’s true;
After all you’ve slept through;
Waking up is hard to do.
I am a morning person. I love waking up with the sun and having two or three hours to myself to walk, create or organize before the duties of the day kick in. Maybe it is the season, or maybe old age, the cares of life – or perhaps the decreasing hours of daylight. Whatever the reason, waking up these days is occasionally depressing, overwhelming or lonely.
No problem. I still have music to console me – with little, very little adaptation.
Woah! Spit-shined boots! This is my own private cliché. This is my exclamation when I experience that darkest moment that is just before dawn and I know by experience I will soon see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Spit-shined boots happened to me again this morning. In my capacity as the new member of Musique, I was diligently, and exuberantly, rehearsing the tenor part for a song that has become one of my favorites. I have thought for a week now that I had the notes down and the memorization in the bag; yet, as I sang with confidence, I began messing up here; forgetting a word over there. Suddenly, the light dawned. Yes! Spit- shined boots!
I learned about spit-shined boots in 1972, from my first husband who was a stract trooper, in the army. Basically, this means he was strict about every last detail of appearance and behavior. Infatuated, starry-eyed, young bride that I was; I sat with him weekly as he spit-shined oxfords and boots. Under his instruction, I learned to do the process myself. Cotton ball, Kiwi, water. Kiwi, water. Kiwi water. Water. Kiwi water. water. My shoulders ached, my eyes were glazed. Just when I was exhausted, he would say, “more water.” Ah, I could see the shine developing under the cotton ball! We were almost done! Then, he would say, “more Kiwi.” The first time this happened, despair came crashing down on me. I so wanted to be done with it. With experience, I came to understand that more Kiwi did not mean I was starting over. More Kiwi is the final polish before the dazzling shine.
The tough moments in life; the times I have already invested too much to go back, but I despair of ever seeing the success of completion? Those are the times I encourage myself with spit-shined boots!
Putting One Foot in Front of the Other, Hiking for Life!
