Over the last two weeks or so, my life has had the quality of a board game, perhaps even the old one literally called, "Life". Or in this case, "One Musician's Life".
I referred last time to having had to leave a concert because the loud rock music was deafening, to me anyway. If I had been playing a board game, I can picture the space on the board: "Attend loud concert, leaving you inexplicably traumatized. Go back two spaces." (I spent almost a week feeling even more "pushed back" than usual, as it turned out.) Then, this past weekend, I heard a local choral group do a lovely job singing Herbert Howells; it was almost as if the Universe had decided to even up the scales, and the afterglow from hearing this music sent me way ahead, maybe five spaces on this imaginary game board. Still glowing, I tuned in early Sunday morning, as I usually do, to "Pipedreams", the public radio organ music show. Michael Barone was presenting some highlights of the first forty years of that program, and lo and behold, more Howells: the Coll Reg Te Deum, sung many years ago in St. Paul, Minnesota by the St. Paul's Cathedral, London, choir. This is not only "more Howells", it is perhaps my touchstone piece, one of the first that I taught myself to sing from a late 1960's record by King's College, Cambridge. I was interested to see whether I would start to cry at the end, the composer's dramatic and heartrending setting of, "O Lord, in Thee have I trusted, let me never be confounded." And I did, although perhaps not quite as hopelessly as I did many times over the years. (Heck, being confounded has been my almost daily experience in this lifetime. I'm rather used to it.) Yet my overall experience of hearing this music clip was surprisingly positive, minus a good deal of the homesickness and heartsickness that has often washed over me ("I wish I could be in that choir/in England"). More than anything, I felt a curious synchronicity and encouragement. I'm still alive to thrill to the music of Howells. And his music came to find me, twice in one weekend! My imaginary space on the board might say, "you are so filled with love, appreciation and beauty, move ahead five spaces."
And it turned out, that wasn't the end: from my new spot on the board, I watched "The Voice" on Monday night. Yes, the silly banter among the judges makes me laugh, but I watch because I appreciate their musicality, and that of many of the contestants making their way onto the world stage for the first time. A new contestant came out, but this time I let out a shriek. According to the information on the screen, she was from Essex, NY. Essex, NY, the town where I spent almost every summer of my young life, where my parents lived for 12 or 13 years in the 70's and 80's, and where I lived much of the early 2000's. OMG. I don't know her -- and as it turned out, she didn't get any chair turns and won't continue on the show -- but the chances of someone from a town of only 700 or so, a town which I know every nook and cranny of, being on this show would seem to be almost nil.
The square here might say, "unusual synchronicities coming your way, and because you are noticing them, go ahead two more spaces"! I don't know what it all means, but I want to remember this metaphor. You can move ahead in life, even when you don't realize you are doing so.
