MUSIC!

During the summers, on many years past, my father and I would climb into the red van and make haste to a concert being played. We'd sit under canopies and under the stars to listen to musicians play music that tugged at their hearts. Music was an escape that we shared and music provided harbor for ships once on tossed seas. Tonight, as our conversation was ending, after we'd laughed, told jokes, reminisced on days past, and hoped for what tomorrow holds, I played the guitar as he listened, in support, on the other end. You see, he's more than my father, he is also my friend and my friend has always told me that flight is what teases my wings. As the turnaround was ending and my playing was done, I heard a beep on the line and my goodbye was said. I joked with a friend, and we mocked our day, I sent my dad a text, and his reply did my heart break, "Seriously it sounded good to a man who likes the blues." The practice is paying off because he's never held back, his truth was my truth because I never knew him to lie. He said I sounded good; compelled to make his words more true, I sacrificed my homework to play just a little more. Now I'm up and my eyes are burning, I've many pages to read and a couple more essays to write. All the while my guitar taunts my unrest, pleading for attention and a chance to expel my stress. Music is my "personal, private, vanishing evocation;" taking many forms and heard in many syllables. My guitar provides a means for my attempts to create while my father, with the oration of a man majestic and grand, speaks in a cadence to make a warrior feel weak. I miss hearing the music, on Sunday he plays, to audiences with hungry ears and needing souls. How blessed am I that his words fill my ears, and provide a nest for hope when I've not found it in myself.


(Quote from Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin)