good music

I'm moving home in a week, because my mother is dying, and a few people have asked me if I need anything. "Music for the drive," I always respond. I love good music.

I've been listening to Copland the past week or so....and I mean Aaron, the American composer, not the band Copeland, though I hear they're good, too. I have always loved his music and did projects about him in college. Something about the way that he writes expresses the things of the human spirit to me, and so after I got my car back from a month in the shop, I grabbed some CDs to load up the 6-disc changer. Among them was a gift from a family I used to nanny for, containing Fanfare for the Common Man and Applachian Spring Suite. Really, my speakers don't go loud enough to experience this music at the proper volume.

As I drove through the city last Friday, blasting Fanfare, seeing mountains and skyscrapers in the same view, I felt a nobility rise up in me, a desire to be great, to do great things, and it is a great and noble thing that I am doing to move home to be with my mom. But Copland's is a Fanfare for the Common Man, and it is also a very common thing that I do--I am going home, something so normal and natural, and doing so in the face of death--something common to every person. And somewhere in the comingling of nobility and commonness is where the essence of humanity lies. Somewhere between the grandiose notes an imagination can conjure and the limitations of our bodies to leap high enough or sweep big enough to express those notes in dance.

Later, in Appalachian Spring Suite, is a section where the lower strings lay a thick, velvety undercurrent as a solo flute dances sweetly up above. And it struck me that this is the state of my soul--a deep faith and rich understanding moving purposefully underneath and in the midst of it, the contemplative questioning heart of a little girl asking, "What will I do without my mom? Who will take care of me? Can I just play today?" But really, the deep tones are not entirely of me, but deeply ingrained into me from somewhere or someone outside of me, slowly becoming part of me. The double basses support the melody of the flute and counter its playfulness and its questions with strength and solidarity. In the same way, whatever the source of this current running through my soul is will bolster me and carry me along through the grandiose and common corridors of my humanity.

With any kind of good music, or good art, for that matter, words cheapen the experience, so go find some Copland to listen to and see if your soul doesn't soar. As for me, I can't wait to listen to it as I drive through the mountains.