Beatrice Writes

What was that song again?

I’m working on a project tonight about the songs that mean something to me. I’m struggling to come up with more than 10. Music is at times an intense part of my life and at times an afterthought. It has been less a part of my life since the radio in my car quit working. I load music on my sorely outdated iPod that only holds 1GB worth of music(!). I rarely fill it. It mostly serves as a distraction during my morning drive the days I go into Lexington. At the same time, I have grown to savor that time in the morning where I simply have silence. If there is something that my life lacks, it is silence.

There has been music since I have been small. My dad played guitar, and I would often beg him to sing Gordon Lightfoot’s “Pony Man” for me because it was about horses. We listened to the radio on the way to school in the morning, and I think I could narrate things mentally in Kruser’s voice just as easily as Morgan Freeman’s because we listened to him for so many years. We listened to Raffi on car trips. My dad had two different tapes that he listened to for years: Tracy Chapman and the Indigo Girls. I can sing most of every song on both those tapes perfectly without accompaniment because he listened to them so often. He eventually moved on to listening to Appalachian folk singer Jean Ritchie and now listens obsessively to NPR.

I had a boyfriend who I bonded with over different bands. I think that it was a large part of our conversation. When we tapped that out, we weren’t left with a lot to talk about. I was passionate about music at that point in my life. I’ve never again felt such passion about music. Another boyfriend was equally as passionate about music. I asked him the question “What lyrics best describe you?” simply because I knew that it was a question that would delight him to think about and discover an answer.

There’s the song that Marissa sang along with our freshman or sophomore year of college. The peppy beat still makes me think of her, even though it has been long since I have heard it on the radio. She’s not that girl anymore, but she’s still there in that song every time I hear it. It encapsulates her, has sealed who she was to me at that time in a bubble so that I remember the essence of Marissa back then each time I hear it.

I’m struggling to remember what song it was that Shannon sang one day at the Wesley Foundation. We were all in the living room, and had just heard the news that singer Rich Mullins had been killed in a car accident. I can remember that crystalline moment, one of so many during those years when I was learning to be a person. Despite turning my back on much of what those years meant to me, they were years that let me learn who I was and gave me the confidence, the acceptance, and the love I needed to grow into myself. Those years were steeped in music. I attended weekly worship services that were about 50% music. I sang in the choir. I sang for fun. We were even known to have morning singing sessions in the showers.

Of all the music I miss the most, I miss singing. I don’t go to church any more, so I have no opportunity to sing in the choir. What other choirs can adults join? I just sing in my car now.