Good Morning.
Writing today on Substack instead of Four Freedoms.
Do we all remember music?
I’m from a family of musicians. I used to drive trolley tours in my fair city of Boston, which the company referred to as being “onstage”. I was well-pleased to carry on our longstanding family business.
My father worked at Berklee College of Music for 35 years; he played for the Boston Pops for three seasons, and worked with every major orchestra, theater company, opera, and just about anything else in Greater Boston for his entire career.
My grandfather was a trumpet player of some renown back in the day. Mostly freelance, and top-name stars would always ask for grandpa by name when he came to town. (Or so mum always said). Probably correct, because I have his collection of autographed photos in my possession. Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, The Four Lads, Hildegarde, Louis Armstrong, and many other photos graced my grandfathers studio downstairs.
Before him, one of my great-grandfathers played in a marching band in the North End of Boston.
I seem to have not inherited that gene; or at the very least, came to it late in life. I play my grandfather’s trumpet today, but like so many things, COVID changed everything. I was briefly in a student big-band when I was learning to play, and even was onstage once at the late, great, Ryles Jazz Club in Cambridge. But nothing ever came of it.
But given all of that joyous family history - a good lot of that happiness and release seems to have been destroyed by the crushing weight of Trump. Our blog’s Patron Saint is the unfortunate Giles Corey. Pressed to death by large rocks during the Salem Witch Trials long ago….his last words are always prescient. Just when we think there can be no more, what do we have? “MORE WEIGHT”.
I am a cancer survivor, and during my darkest days, I often took great solace from a Quranic passage.
Quran 2:286 ("Allah does not burden a soul beyond that it can bear"), assures that God does not impose trials exceeding a person's capacity, providing spiritual comfort during hardship. It emphasizes that personal struggles are within one's potential to endure, fostering resilience, trust, and the belief that relief follows difficulty.
On many days of late, it feels like we as a nation have reached the point of no return. We can indeed, bear no more. The Soul of the nation is at stake; can we endure? Are we resilient? Will relief follow this difficulty?
But these are grand questions for another time. What can we do to bring back a little joy in our sad and useless lives right now?
I well remember January 20, 2009. We were on the National Mall with a million of our closest friends, celebrating what we thought was the end of a dark period in our history.
Some days later, I was listening to some music, a symphony, and I felt great relief at the time. It was OK to listen to music again. It was OK to feel joy again. It was OK to be happy again.
Alas, how fleeting that was.
But sometimes a piece of music reaches through the gloom.
Last Monday night, I was driving to an emergency meeting at my Masonic Lodge. Like all fraternal organizations, we are suffering a leadership crisis that was precipitated by COVID. That’s a story for another day. But on the way to the meeting, I was listening to Sirius XM’s Bruce Springsteen channel.
My favourite song by Bruce and the Band is “Hungry Heart”. My wife and I are huge fans, and we’ve often had debates about what is Bruce’s definitive song. Everyone thinks it is “Born to Run”. Mrs. TriSec prefers the album “Badlands”.
My choice is “Jungleland”, and this is what came across the airwaves. A live recording, from the old Boston Garden!
I was blasting it pretty loudly, listening to the lyrics instead of singing along, and like Bruce often does, he reached my soul this week. No troubles of the world or my personal life mattered on that brief car ride. Sometimes music moves me to tears; usually it is a symphonic work by a noted Viennese composer that can do so. But not this time.
So that is the takeaway. Even in the darkest of times, there is still joy to be found if you know where to look, or listen.
Nobody can say if better times will be coming, or if the patient is too far gone to be saved.
But even on a deathwatch….the family and friends of the terminal patient should always be aware of their own mental health. A little music now and then is a good thing, don’t you think?