Angela's Horn Studio

Until recently, I had nearly forgotten to what extent poetry has been a part of my life, through every stage of my life. When I began to think about it, I realized that in my early childhood, there were the nursery rhymes my mother read to me. Later in childhood there were the English poetry collections that I would browse during my lazy summer days (so glad I had those!) and read Wordsworth, Tennyson, both Brownings, etc.  There were the poems I memorized in school (Robert Frost and some Shakespeare sonnets come to mind) and a book of Emily Dickinson which I loved and read for many years. Then there were Whitman, Thoreau and Emerson. Later, there were Rilke, Rumi and various ancient Chinese and Japanese poets. Then Mary Oliver and Billy Collins – which brings me to where I have been residing (poetically) recently – mostly among contemporary American poets.

I’ve been absorbing poems of Denise Levertov and Christian Wiman and discovering many other poets who are too many to name here. I am rediscovering the joys of reading and re-reading slowly and deeply, finding the layers of meanings and the music in the sounds of the words. It’s not unlike getting to know a piece of music.

Recently, while flipping through one of my anthologies, I happened upon a poem by Ellen Bryant Voigt called “Song and Story.”

The opening image is that of “a girl strapped in her mechanical crib,” presumably a baby in an incubator, whose pulse deepens and steadies as her mother sings to her. Later, Voigt moves into the world of ancient Greece with Orpheus and Eurydice, who was taken to the underworld.

She did not sing — you cannot sing in hell —
but in that viscous dark she heard the song
flung like a rope into the crater of hell,

Then soon comes the line,

The one who can sing sings to the one who can’t,
who waits in the pit…

I found this line to be so moving – and so timely, in thinking of those whose lives are in turmoil right now. It occurred to me that this is precisely what we do for each other when others are sitting in darkness. We sing for each other – whether by words expertly strung together in a beautifully crafted poem, or through our music, or through our loving actions. We sing so that those who cannot sing know that there is life and hope waiting for them. However faintly they may hear the song at the moment, it exists for them.

The poem ends with these lines, a reminder that the song (and hope) is always there:

the song, rising and falling, sings in the heartbeat,
sings in the seasons, sings in the daily round —
even at night, deep in the murmuring wood —
listen — one bird, full-throated, calls to another,
little sister, frantic little sparrow under the eaves.

You can read the entire poem here.

Though I’ve not posted in quite awhile, I actually have been writing quite a bit – just not here.  For many months, every time I sat down to write a post, I found myself wanting to write about so many things – but never music.  So I decided to find a venue this fall where I could explore those topics. I wrote for weeks about all these other things churning in my mind, avoiding music as much as I could, but eventually hit a wall when I couldn’t tell one particular story I wanted to tell without writing about music. As it turns out, the group of people I was writing with (and for) seemed to respond most strongly to my work when I finally allowed music into it.

The act of writing itself, which I have come to think of, in part, as an exterior process of thinking, always seems to lead me back to something that has at least a tinge of music to it, or something that has somehow been made possible by this musical life of mine. It is like that carnival game where you try to beat down the pin and it keeps popping up somewhere else.

My musical schedule this fall was full and rich. It isn’t surprising that it managed to creep into my writing: Barber of Seville, Also Sprach Zarathustra, Mahler 2, Dvorak 8, Brahms 4. With Thanksgiving coming up, I feel as if I want to say how thankful I am for the  opportunity to perform these works, and with such wonderful musicians.

While I am extremely grateful, the shortcoming of this kind of statement is that it fails to convey the whole picture. This Thanksgiving, one that is the first since a great loss for my family, I want to acknowledge what lies beneath all that I am thankful for. I don’t want to pretend that there are no shadows.

And when I write about music, I don’t want to romanticize it, pretending that it is love itself, or life itself. The truth is that, if I ever thought that music could change the world, I do not think that now.

I do, however, believe that it can change one moment in time, in this one life. I know that it can serve as a connection back to earth, back to the physical reality of the moment. It allows me to sit in a hall full of people who have come to be in that moment also, to listen to music that was written by someone who felt compelled to write, to create, to dig into themselves and the world around them and share how they experience (or hear) life – both light and darkness, joy and sorrow.

Over the course of time, music has been created and re-created by those who knew that music was not everything – that there is more to this life than music – but that it was something. It was one way – their way – to tell a story and to add a unique voice to a wonderful conversation.

For this, I am truly thankful.

Recently, as a distraction, I took one of those BuzzFeed quizzes.  This one was “Which country should you have been born in?”  My result was England. “You like to be in control and maintain appearances,” the description underneath the photo of Big Ben so succinctly spelled out.  It got a small laugh out of me, because I have been known to be a bit of an Anglophile at times, and that part about control may have come up once or twice before….

Richard and Andreas, Summer 2013

However, if there is anything that I have learned this April, an April in which we lost my husband’s 21-year-old son Richard, an April which has shaken us to the core, is that so much of life is completely out of our control.  There are no guarantees.  We only can control our own actions, living our best – and loving our best – at any given moment. Live and trust.

Living and trusting do not come easily right now. The world looks vastly different and much more frightening to me than it did a month ago. While we contemplate how things could have gone so wrong, and as we learn about the extent of the darkness and addiction that overtook this brilliant and talented young man, I can’t help but wonder how to protect our little son from the hazards that no doubt lie ahead of him.  How do we properly equip him to thrive in a world that is more pressure-filled and fast-paced than ever, a world that values scope rather than depth, a world that seems to leave very little room for the quiet space that the spirit needs in order to grow bright and strong? A world where everything (both good and completely ruinous) is just a few keystrokes away?

We are devoid of answers.

I must believe, however, that hidden in the maze of the unanswered questions and sadness lies something that will eventually give us peace and hope and a way to return to living and trusting again.

In the meantime, our two-year-old gives his stuffed Grinch a hug  – the Grinch was a gift from Richard –  and says “Is the Grinch Richard?  I’m going to give Richard a hug.”  We too hold and hug Richard in our hearts.  We always will.