CLOSE TO YOU

CLOSE TO YOU

I’m especially loving Pam today. I don’t have to have a reason, because just knowing her…just being with her evokes something deeply joyful…something thankful in me. The lyricist, Hal David wrote “on the day that she was born the angels got together and decided to create a dream come true”, but I don’t think any angel made this dream come true… that decision was made by a much greater authority. He surely did sprinkle moon dust in her hair and a starlight in her eyes. She’s so beautiful to me.

I’m listening to “Close To You”with Ron Isley singing David’s lyric on a beautiful bed of Burt Bachrach’s music. I’ve been in music as long as I can remember and I get amazed all over again by its ability to move my heart in ways that are indescribable. With only twelve notes in a scale, used by truly gifted songwriters, composers, arrangers, orchestrators and artists, their passion reaches down into my heart and take me to places I could never visit in the physical. These are special places, deep… soulful places. Regardless of genre, music of every leaning has a way of speaking to me.

I want to honor all musical styles from all over the world. Valuing the music of a others is a healthy way of learning respect for people groups, countries and cultures. It’s great to have an appreciation of a particular style of music that is meaningful to you. Unfortunately some feel it important to talk with distain about music and a culture they don’t really understand. There are those who think their fellows are ignorant who cannot appreciate the music they revere. Leonard Bernstein alarmed the classical purists with his obvious appreciation of various pop genres, but he understood the cultural relevance of other forms. Music is not a little harbor…but an expansive ocean of styles and conveyance. When you think about it and see it for what it is, expecting people to only appreciate one musical path, it’s actually refusing to allow for different ways humanity views and absorbs the theatre of life. There are many windows of divergent expression, and all reflected in the creative’s pen and voice.

It is the sum of their lives, what they see, where they’re from, what they experience, their families and the way they were raised, their ethnicity and culture, places they’ve lived, the influence of art, music, writing and political outlook. The confluence of all of this forms a lyrical and musical philosophy. What emanates from these artists is reconstituted in their psyche, and emerges as a unique utterance. After the technical discipline is established, the power of any creative artist is in the sum total of their life experiences.

Music resurrects pain and soothes it all in the same breath. It is a combination of conscious and unconscious thought. It says what we can’t. It cries when we don’t have any tears left…It smiles when we can’t….it can put its loving arm around us and tell us… “it’s going to be okay.”

The abilities of great artists and musicians have certainly been finely honed to be sure, but for me…and again I speak just for me…even though the artist is intentional to be excellent and has diligently worked themself to the bone…the marrow of talent is of spiritual content… and that for me is a gift from God.

 “Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near? 
Just like me, they long to be… close to you”

Yep.