Monday, September 1, 2008

Sweet Melodies

From my iPod, my daughter’s voice blends in perfectly with the harmonies created by her friends Michael, Erin and Rick. I listen again and again, enraptured, loving that they are improvising yet know exactly when to add their voices and when to pause and be silent, when to sing the words, when to hum, when to tag on a repeated end line. This music “Deep in My Heart, Oh Great Spirit” brings me such sweet gentle fascination…could it be the genetic recognition of my cellular structure as a Mother?

Whatever the call, the notes and words come to me as sweet sadness for our struggles in this life. The phrasing combines melancholy with hope, with regret, like a kind of high spiritual blues that cries to show how hard life is…..and yet….oh, and yet….! Like parallel pendulums, the voices fly though time and space, brushing each other at each apex with perfect timing. The low male voices mourn and rejoice; the women fling their high notes into a peal of hope born of anxiety and weightless energy. Giving voice to the perils and intensity of living, the singers draw me in again and again. Hmmm hmmm……..