An American Tune

I really love music. Not all kinds I know. But I love it when a tune I know sneaks up behind me and taps me on the head and I whirl around and recognize it suddenly. I was in church this morning--where I am most Sunday mornings and as we ambled our way along the liturgy and readings a song arose in mid-service. Mostly when I don't recognize a song as one from the random memory, I listen to a verse or two before joining in, trying to categorize it, see if indeed I'd heard it before somewhere else. This has happened a few times with hymns in the past and I'm always pleasantly surprised when I do know the song.

Anyway, while listening to the melody during the second verse of this second hymn, it seemed to me that I knew this song but not from church. I looked down at the teeny-weeny notes which shows the person who wrote the lyrics and the music. The music was done by Bach. Well, that didn't help me much. I mean I like Bach, I guess when I recognize it, but I usually hum Beethoven in a pinch. But I just knew this music. I could feel the synapses pushing stuff aside, shuffling, shuffling and suddenly I had it! I had Paul Simon's American Tune! Okay, it didn't match exactly, but it was there, right there! And I was amazed!

An American Tune is one of those songs that gets stuck in my head for long periods at a time and here there it was! A mosh up of Bach! I went to our wise and wonderful music director after church and explained my excitement at recognizing a tune in an unfamiliar place. He was trying to figure the melody out from American Tune, but he couldn't quite remember how it went so he asked me to e-mail him the song so he could hear it.

Okay, so this is where some people will turn off the post...because the version I remembered most was not the Paul Simon version, but the Starland Vocal Band version. It was sung acappella with beautiful harmonies and it was just my favorite song for a very long time. So I found this version and after playing it about 100 times just to hear it again, I sent it off to the music director. I'm not sure if he's appalled that I sent this instead of the other. I haven't heard back from him yet.

But I love this...the fact that I was actually listening to something written a long time ago and never even knew it!

The Meaning of the Date

For most Americans, this Sunday is an anniversary of a horrific event 10 years ago. Even though life has gone on and people live their lives in pretty much the same way, it's still something in the collective American memories of 9/11 which rush back, asking, "What were you doing when?"

But the significance of this date has taken on a new meaning for our family. A tragedy last year swamped our emotions, flooded our consciousness and pushed the national mourning to the recesses of our minds. We are remembering a different scenario than most this Sunday. We are asking ourselves, "where were you when you got the call?" We, too have moved on with our lives, pretty much the same way. But the hollowness in the corner of our heart is still there and is still somewhat fresh. It still hurts. It catches us unaware when we are going about our lives. It robs us of breath sometimes with its jagged edge of memory. It stings with the thoughts of what those loved ones won't be sharing with us: the new baby, the new engagements, the laughter of coming together. And it's more personal than watching the images of those buildings crumbling to the ground. We thought we were lucky then because we didn't lose anyone in that calamity. But we lost them years later on essentially the same day.

So we are mourning again, in a way taking comfort that the nation is mourning along side of us for a different reason. There is a comfort in a way of all those people feeling sad, even thought they aren't aware of our own personal sadness. But we are sorrowful in a way that the nation isn't. Eventually we'll heal and it won't be as sore as it is now, just like the nation. But we aren't there yet. It takes time.