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January 2014

This isn’t a typical Tuesday morning song. In fact, it’s not quite a morning song at all. Too moody, too unpredictable, too jazz-inflected to do for a mid-week start. Yet here it is, because for many of us today feels like a Monday, and most Mondays I spend in a bit of a daze, recalling the fun that was had over the weekend – and holding out a few more hours of living in the recent past. Let’s ease on into it this time.

Better yet, let’s go back a couple of days, to your Saturday night. A little bending of time before the snow and freezing temps return to New England. Just a few more hours of leisure. A few more moments of luxury. We’re already over Monday anyway. It’s Tuesday, and it’s going to be… grand.

PS - Cécile McLorin Salvant is pretty amazing. This is from her album ‘WomanChild.’

I didn’t know what time it was
Till I met you.
Oh, what a lovely time it was,
How sublime it was too!
I didn’t know what day it was
You hold my hand.
Warm like the month of May it was,
and I’ll say it was grand.
Grand to be alive, to be young,
to be mad, to be yours alone!
Grand to see your face, feel your touch,
hear your voice say I’m yours alone.

It would be one of those pivotal albums that informed everything thereafter. Like Shirley Horn’s ‘Here’s to Life’, Madonna’s ‘Ray of Light’, ‘James’ ‘Laid’, REM’s ‘Automatic for the People’, and Marianne Faithfull’s ‘A Secret Life’, the first album I ever heard by Casey Stratton – ‘Standing at the Edge’ – instantly became a collection of songs that spoke to me deeper than any Top Forty pop song ever could. Produced by longtime Madonna cohort Patrick Leonard, ‘Standing at the Edge‘ was that rarest of animals – a cohesive cycle of music that took the listener on an emotional journey with the richest of melodies, and one of the most moving voices I’d ever heard in my long-short life.

I remember listening to the album and marveling at both the sonics and the lyrics, the majestic cascading piano, the moving bits of strings, and at the core that glorious voice – transcendent and vulnerable and powerful all at once. There are certain albums that come into your world when you expect it the least, but need it the most. This was one of those albums for me. They don’t preach, they don’t beg, they don’t wink or dance, but they seep inside your soul, because they share something only you thought you’d experienced. Maybe it was heartache, maybe it was a lost love, maybe it was betrayal, maybe it was pain. Maybe, if you’re lucky, it was happiness.

‘Standing at the Edge’ delivered all of that, and in Stratton’s voice I heard a kinship of spirit that the greatest artists are able to conjure for all of us willing to listen. It was the transformation of feeling into song, of emotion into music. From the most plaintive of coos to the most wailing of laments, his instrument may have carried the weight of the world sometimes, but it always soared.

Suzie introduced me to a great many things. Mary Poppins, grape taffy, fried clams, the soundtrack to ‘The Mighty Quinn’, and a number of movies, including ‘Auntie Mame.’ I was raised on a rather sheltered diet of pop culture, at least until I could find my own way. That meant we didn’t have cable, or a VCR, until the late 80’s, so Suzie was responsible for bringing me up to speed on all the things an adolescent needs to conquer the world, or at least to have a fighting chance. Enter ‘Harold and Maude.’

In our cellar, I dimmed the lights and popped the video into the VCR. It was probably a weekend night – I didn’t go out much until later in high school. The soundtrack by Cat Stevens lulled me into its folk-like trance, and then the story captured my attention, and my heart.

At the start of the movie we see Harold staging numerous suicide scenes in his morbid fascination with death, trying in vain to shock or surprise or simply get a reaction from his disinterested (if passive-aggressively antagonistic) mother. He forms an unlikely friendship with an older – much older – woman, Maude, who shares his joy in attending funerals. I’m not sure what Suzie thought I would relate to or love the most about the movie – Harold’s empty and desperate dramatic theatrics, or Maude’s eccentric joie de vivre. Maybe she just appreciated unlikely friendships and knew I would too.

Back then I related mostly to Harold.

Today, I relate a little better to Maude.

That is, I think, the best trajectory for a proper journey on this earth.

The strange thing was, that even with its focus on death, this movie sings with life. It may have been a risky gift for someone with a suicidal fascination, but in the end it only left me feeling glad to be alive. A little sadder for having gotten to know these characters only to say good-bye when the movie was over, but sadder in the best way – in the way that the heart bleeds so beautifully for however long we are here.