MUSIC NOTES TODD KOMARNICKI
Peace in a Pod I wish I could sing you this column. To let you in behind my ribcage, to where sound and yearning and the beating of my heart all rhythm out my love for the songs below. Music is definitively personal, but when it becomes communal, the silent “ah” of a shared joy can bond people together for a lifetime.Years ago, during a live performance by Radiohead, the audience became so ecstatic at what we were experiencing together that strangers hugged after many songs. “Did you hear that!?” we said with our gaping, happy mouths, not needing any words at all. And then in our own silences, in sorrow or wonder, or sheer kitchen-dance euphoria, we will find music that becomes ours so distinctly, that we are taller and deeper and wiser just for the hearing. Music that we will spend years sharing with new and old friends, awaiting the moment when the song becomes a bridge that not even time can tear down. So it is in this spirit that I offer you my iPod and earphones, and hope that once heard, these choices will become a part of your story, too. “Chet Baker’s Unsung Swan Song” by David Wilcox (Home Again: A&M Records, 1991) is not only a haunted and riveting portrait of the artist’s lifelong battle with heroin addiction. It is also a
tremulous reminder that we are all fragile, leaning on the windowsill of life, wanting to fly with the songbirds outside on the branch, not knowing if we’ll find a safe place to land.This song has taught me compassion as if I’d witnessed a stranger save a life. It is that tender. It is that true. Another song that makes me cry, but this one just out of pure, dumb happiness, is “Killing the Blues” as performed by Allison Krause and Robert Plant on their delicious new recording of duets, Raising Sand (Rounder, 2007). The combination of Plant’s unexpected restraint and Kraus’ purity of tone allows this song about loss and new beginnings to tiptoe back and forth between those two realities. And then, as it glimmers to a finish, you
realize that the song has done for the listener exactly what the title promised. Johnny Cash spent a lifetime preparing his voice for his final recordings. In his last several CDs, all exquisitely produced by Rick Rubin, Cash’s ravaged lungs and weary soul gave a gasping beauty to his work that only survival could have inspired. On When the Man Comes Around (American Recordings, 2002), his cover of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” takes all the levity out of romance and replaces it with a depth of desire for his wife that is the definition of “to cherish.” This had long been a favorite song of my father’s, as it was the song he associated with first falling in love with my mother 50 years ago. When I heard my dad’s whisper-scratch PRISM 2008
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sing-along with Johnny during a recent drive in the car, the lyrics finally made sense. Love, like great music, changes you the moment it is first encountered. The earth stops for a second—just to let you catch your breath. Six years ago, I was living in Amsterdam—far away from my life and where I’d hoped it would go. Josh Rouse’s “The Whole Night Through” (Under Cold Blue Stars: Slow River Records, 2002), with its simple lyric definition of grace—“What we need right now, is somewhere to just lay down and dream the whole night through”— was both salve and solace while I waited for the next chapter of my life to begin. Now when I listen to it, it’s not tears that arrive, but gratitude. Sometimes we need to stop and learn to dream again, before we have the strength and vision to dance into our days. Leonard Cohen talk-sings. Never quite a lamentation, never just a melody with words. He would have been the Bob Dylan of the Old Testament if he’d
he treasured. All the narrator has in the end is his story. His song. And only in the sharing of it will he be able to live on. The final song that I need you to hear is The Blue Nile’s “Easter Parade” (AWalk Across the Rooftops:A&M Records, 1993, originally released 1984). Everyone who listens will have a different guess as to what is happening. When I hear it, I see Jesus walking down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. I’m watching from a skyscraper and the air is filled with hope been born at the right time. Never do I find his wounds and desire for forgiveness more potent than in “Famous Blue Raincoat” (Songs of Love and Hate: Sony, 1995, originally released 1971). A story of barren friendship and the cost of loyalty, “Raincoat” invites us into a deeply private pain, and then tells us only the details, and little of the truth. What remains is a man without the things
and confetti, possibility and redemption. And then there is no air at all.The streets are empty. My throat is dry from daring to reach for Paul Buchanan’s vocal high wire. I can’t move.The song can’t move. Yet it does. It leans forward just enough to catch the wind again. The parade will continue. The sun chooses the sky. And I press play again. I need to go find myself, this time amidst the crowd. Checking every face for the familiar. Feeling the pavement so solid beneath my feet that I am certain it’s directing my path. Music calls us all forward. “The wild is calling,” Buchanan sings. “This time I follow.” I hope you follow, too. Todd Komarnicki is a director, screenwriter, film producer, novelist, and euphoric kitchendancer. His third novel, War, will be released by Arcade Publishing (arcadepub.com) in July.
TOWARD A BIBLICAL AGENDA March 28-30, 2008 at Palmer Seminary of Eastern University (Philadelphia)
How should I vote in 2008? What issues are most important to God? What does the Bible say about abortion, gay marriage, and immigration? What about foreign policy, including the conflict in Iraq? And overcoming poverty in the U.S. and around the world? Keynote addresses and workshops at this timely and important conference will explore these and other questions to help Christians apply biblical values in the sociopolitical realm, including the voting booth. It’s a conference that all who strive to be faithful to the gospel in the public square should not miss. For more information or to register, call
484-384-2990 or visit www.esa-online.org.
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Speakers include those pictured and more . . . PRISM Sponsored by Palmer Seminary’s Sider Center on Ministry 2008 and Public Policy and Evangelicals for Social Action.
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