Day Seven – My Five Favorite Songs

As I mentioned in my day three blog, I do not like picking a “favorite” anything.  Picking five favorite songs is difficult.  According to Nielsen’s Music 360 2014 study, 93% of the U.S. population listens to music, spending more than 25 hours each week jamming to their favorite tunes.  I am lucky if I listen to 25 hours of music in a year.  Not that I dislike or don’t enjoy music.  I’m just a big fan of silence.  In a cacophonous world, embracing silence is therapeutic.  When driving a car, I rarely put the radio on.  I never have music playing in the background or headphones during the day when working, reading, cooking, cleaning, or anything.  Today I have probably listened to more music than I have in the past year.  I have finally come up with five songs that I wouldn’t necessarily call favorites, but they either speak to or have meaning to me.

On May 26 and 27, 1994, Pink Floyd’s Division Bell Tour came to Cleveland Stadium in Cleveland, Ohio.  Those of you who know me, I’m sure you know where this is headed, but first a few thoughts on Pink Floyd.  There were a few songs by Pink Floyd I knew in my youth.  On November 30, 1979, my senior year in high school, “The Wall”  was released, and “Another Brick in the Wall”  became an anthem.  I am often asked if I miss home, the United States, my family, and my friends.  I can be talking to someone, and they say, “I miss you”. I know my answer should be, “I miss you too”.  It is difficult for me to say these words.  Not because I don’t miss them, but I don’t miss them there, where they are.  I miss them not being here and sharing my experiences here.  Yes, that is probably selfish of me, but I do wish they were here sometimes.  So my first song is Pink Floyd’s, “Wish You Were Here”.  I am also linking to the songs on YouTube.

Sometimes during my English lessons, I ask questions about music.  Since nearly everyone answers the question, “What is your favorite song?”, with, “It depends”, I have switched it up.  I ask them to tell me a song that defines them.  I also email the question before class so they have time to think about it.  The song that answers that question for me, is one I loved the minute I heard it.  I love these lyrics and feel like they define me:

Now that she’s back in the atmosphere

With drops of Jupiter in her hair

She acts like summer and walks like rain

Reminds me that there’s a time to change, hey

Since the return of her stay on the moon

She listens like spring and she talks like June, hey

Hey, hey, yeah

Two years ago, I was having a conversation with a student about musical lyrics.  She asked me what I thought the lyrics to “Forever Young” (not the Rod Stewart song) meant. It got me thinking about my song, which is my second choice for this blog, “Drops of Jupiter”, by Train.  After my conversation with Basia, I revisited “Drops of Jupiter” to see if the lyrics did have any special meaning.  Patrick Monahan, the lead singer,  wrote this song in memory of his late mother who died from cancer. He stated that the first few lines of the song suddenly came to him as he slept in bed one night when visiting his hometown in Pennsylvania.

My brother started studying piano at age 5 or 6.  He studied with a woman who had trained students for the Metropolitan Opera, Audrey Benedict and studied under her for 11 years.  At the age of 12, she enrolled him in a 4-year course from the Sherwood School of Music in Chicago.  Between the ages of 10 and 16, he won four local, three district, three state, and 2 national piano titles.  He also won Beethoven, Bach, and Sonatina national piano guild titles in each category.  I think he practiced about 2 hours per day.  I remember having to go to his piano competitions (when we were both young).  I remember I didn’t like them…sitting for hours listening to all the students.  One memory that makes me smile is, that my dad loved the movie “The Sting” with Robert Redford and Paul Newman. Mark learned to play “The Entertainer”.  I can’t tell you how many times my dad would ask him to play it.  After my mom died, my brother, my grandmother, and I purchased a baby grand piano for our church.   We had a dedication ceremony in December 2001, just a few short months after September 11^th.  Mark played the piano for the dedication.  Highlighting songs from his youth competition days.  He ended the repertoire with “New York State of Mind”.  Needless to say, it brought down the house.  You are probably wondering what the hell my third song is.  No, it is not “The Entertainer” or “New York State of Mind”.  It is one by Billy Joel, but first, one more story.  After my mom died, we were going through her things and discovered two boxes of letters.  They contained letters my dad had written to her while he was in the army and her letters to him which he had also saved. These were the most beautiful letters I had ever read.  My dad had such a way with words.  He always described the scene around him.  I remember one describing sitting with other soldiers drinking a beer.  He described the smoke-filled room, the type of music on the radio, etc.  My third song is that first, it reminds me of my brother and the descriptive lyrics remind me of Dad’s letters.  It is “The Piano Man” by Billy Joel.

On to number four.  This song was released in 1997 just a few months before my dad died.  He was a person who always had a radio playing.  He even went to sleep with it on.  He heard this song and loved it and said it was our song.  I still can’t listen to it without getting a bit teary-eyed.  The last time I heard it before today was probably October 2015.  I was in Inner Mongolia, of all places.  I had hired a driver to take me to the Gobi Desert.  We were driving along in the middle of nowhere and “Butterfly Kisses” by Bob Carlisle came on the radio.  Yes, I started crying.

Last but not least, we made it to number five.  For the last 10 years of her life, my mom, a woman who never drank, smoked, and rarely ate red meat,  battled primary sclerosing cholangitis, a rare liver disease.  On February 28, 2000, in Cleveland Clinic, she died while waiting for a liver transplant.  Now I know I started this blog off by saying I rarely play the radio in the car and prefer silence.  Leaving the Cleveland Clinic that morning, by myself, I played this song on repeat the entire drive home to Warren.  I know the lyrics to this song are about the death of musician Jonathan Melvoin (1961–1996) from a heroin overdose.  But the song was comforting to me.  It is “Angel” by Sarah McLachlan.

Those are the five songs that speak to or have meaning to me.  It appears they also have a theme of death, but honestly, even if I say I get teary-eyed, they all hold happy memories.