Long live the music

It’s 4:30 in the morning and I can’t sleep.

All that keeps running through my head is: it started and ended in music.

There was music in-between too, but I remember the beginning and the ending most of all…especially the ending, which was long after the ending I thought was the ending. Music can be like that sometimes.

Maybe I never would have reached that moment when the tightly wrapped knot I’ve carried so very deep inside finally unrolled and untwisted and simply faded away if it hadn’t been for the music.

Finding that music clip on the net was, if nothing else, cathartic.

The piece is a simple little thing by a couple of “new classical/new age” artists, Eric Tingstad and Nancy Rumbel. They do nice stuff. Look them up—they record for the Narada label.

The work is called “Emerald Pavane”, though it’s really a waltz.

I first heard it working at WFMR in Milwaukee, the classical station there. They had a big stack of Narada albums they were never going to play and the staff got to go through and take some. I grabbed the album “Emerald” and in listening to it found this little tune touched me in that delightful way that seems to give you the flavor of winter apples and cinnamon—sweet but with a little bitter thrown in.

That was years before I met Andi.

She was my unexpected blessing. She was the “heart of my heart”. For a while, she was my wife.

The first time she visited me in Peoria, I played “Emerald Pavane” for her. She loved it, and it became “our song”. I even wrote some words for it, though I never sang them for her.

Look in my eyes
Tell me what do you see?
Can you see burning bright
Love shining forth from me?

Take my hand
and we’ll walk the road
Side by side
through all of life’s joys and pains
Hold my hand
and sing with me
Let our love be our song
Let our song
become a flame
A light that shines on and on
and on…

Whenever things would get tough, Andi or I would pull out this song and play it. It was a connection to promises we’d made, to love we’d felt, to a song that we hoped would be sung for a life time.

It didn’t work out that way.

There’s no sense in laying blame, or recriminations. The bare facts are that we could not live together. We set off all the negative tendencies in each other. So after three years we divorced and went our separate ways. I saw her a couple of times after the divorce then forcibly removed myself from any contact with her.

A couple of years ago Andrea tracked me down through my parents and we had a very nice phone conversation in which she apologized to me, and I apologized to her. It only took 11 years to get there, but if it gave her closure, glory to God for that gift to someone I loved.

It wasn’t my closure though. I thought I’d managed that within a year or so of the divorce. But the music wasn’t done, though it had been silenced for a time.

So I was poking around the internet, looking to see if Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Christmas work “Hodie” had been reissued on CD (it has and I ordered it).

One should never poke around the internet. One can find things that sting.

For some bizarre reason I thought “what was that song I used to like by that guitar and oboe combo?” I couldn’t remember the artists’ names or the title of the tune! I did remember the label was Narada though,so it was off to their website, a look down their artist list and there it was: Eric Tingstad and Nancy Rumbel. Cool!

They have a website too and even better, a complete discography—with samples!

The opening phrases on guitar and mandolin insinuated themselves under the armor of my composure and an ache, terrible yet beautiful, filled my heart. When the oboe came in with the melody, something broke inside. Not in a bad way, but more like a gate that had been holding back a flood simply surrendering to the inevitable and letting the waters flow.

Andi and I danced to this music once. I could see the white living room in Peoria, and Andi’s petite form in my arms. I remembered her warmth and how lovely she felt when we embraced. I remembered the first kiss, which neither of us ever agreed had been initiated by the other, but which was the first bonafide “fireworks” experience for either of us (she was 19 and I was 27 at the time).

I also remembered the screaming and the shouting, the anger, the evil things we said to each other. I remembered my fiery temper and frustration and biting words. I remembered her up-and-down emotions (she told me when we talked two years ago she was finally diagnosed as bipolar, and her meds make all the difference in the world) and her own blazing temper, and how in that regard we were definitely NOT a good match.

All this while “our song” played and tears flowed and my heart ached wth joys gladly remembered, pains unwillingly recalled, and songs never to be sung in duet.

And finally, finally after so long, I sighed and just…let it go.

Sitting here now at Christmastime, with soft music playing (actually it’s the Prego theme, of all things, and a very nice tune indeed even if it was used for a commercial) many of those memories will stay with me always, but they no longer hold any power to hurt. If I saw Andrea tomorrow, I could smile and chat without any qualms or wishes for what we once had or anger for losing what should have been a glorious lifelong symphony. Even the Emerald Pavane now elicits only a bittersweet smile and an appreciation for musical craftsmanship.

It began and ended in music.

Long live the music.