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Music

A number of years ago I was at a low point. I was searching how to work through some issues at work. My two children were not sleeping through the night and I was struggling to be fully awake. My diabetes had just been diagnosed and between my work, my hour commute, my commitment to be a good parent and co-parent, I found myself before dawn each day at the local YMCA trying to lower my blood sugar.

I was very clear about one thing that day. The day before I had been tired and in pain; that morning I was tired and in pain; the rest of that day I would be tired and in pain; the next day I would be tired and in pain. That component of my life was ascendant.

As with many folk at the gym I brought tunes with me to keep me moving. I had just bought Steely Dan's live album Alive in America (which was released in 1995 but I might not have gotten it right away) and was still learning how the live renditions went.  Reelin' In The Years came on, a tune I had learned by heart as a college first-year student. Their live version had what I would describe as a reggae-inflection. It was familiar and new, it bounced, it lifted me up. I was smiling. I wasn't smiling much back then. I was smiling at the gym that day before sunrise.

Music. I am particularly susceptible to it's ability to lift me out of the abyss.


A few years before that my first child was born. It was by emergency C-section, 6 1/2 weeks early. I spent the 36 hours before his birth lying to my wife that I knew that everything was going to be just fine, smiling that lying smile of mine that I can do as needed. Everything did work out fine despite my deepest fears of losing both my wife and son.  The lying took its toll though. When running an errand out of the hospital after his birth I had to pull off the road and spend some time sobbing.  I got it out of my system but I had John Williams playing a classical guitar piece by Peter Warlock on the car stereo and part of the bargain of that day was that I can't listen to that piece any more. When I do it all hits full force and I start sobbing again.

Music. It has always been present at my times in the abyss.

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