I'm Alive!
Music is My Multivitamin
"I'M ALIVE! ... I'm Alive - I'm Alive - I'm Alive!," sings the chorus about the protagonist in an oratorio I'm studying for possible performance next year.
It has special meaning for me now, as I write this on my 76th birthday. After experiencing several recent difficult transitions, I feel like I have finally crossed over the ocean, not just to feel like a survivor; but ... dare I even think it? ... like one who is very much alive.
If you have been reading my essays in the past six months (which I warmly invite you to do if you haven't had the opportunity to do so yet), you know that Susan, my wife of 53 years and partner of 56, died in July, 2023. Simultaneously, I was in the midst of retiring from my university faculty position, experiencing being a single person for the first time in my life, and also realizing that any thoughts of new horizons ahead were overshadowed by the fact that none of us lives forever and that our years of good health and full capacities are finite.
The past 15 months have been crammed with many administrative tasks (financial and legal matters, etc.), but those have paled in comparison to integrating the experiences associated with these four simultaneous passages.
I feel very fortunate that I've come through it intact; there was no guarantee of that.
Now comes a new question. As our beloved poet Mary Oliver asks:
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"
At this crazy age, I feel I am being given the opportunity to answer this question anew.
If I had been asked this question in earlier phases of my life, I may have come forward with elaborate plans for my work life, for my family life, for my personal life, for my civic life .... enough to make me exhausted before I started.
Now I want to reflect before responding, and allow myself to say yes, no, or maybe ... on my own timetable. I want to get better at allowing myself to say -- "I think I'll take a nap." [The cats are always up for that!] or "I'm going to start reading that novel that's been on my nightstand for longer than I can remember." [Why does that always seem like a luxury that I can only indulge when the "real" work is done?] or even "I don't think I'll go to that event that I'm supposed to go to." [should, should, should]. I am fully cognizant that the ability to ponder these dilemmas is indicative of a certain degree of privilege, and I am very grateful for that.
<Perhaps I can learn a few things from my cats, George and Raffi.>
But my "responsibility button" has always been super-sized, and I am ready to shrink it a bit. Ever feel like Alice?
<cartoon from public Facebook Page, "History of Music" 10-2-2024 - original source not indicated>
As I think about this new phase of my life, I find the following quote from Steve Jobs to be both brutally honest and highly motivating (thanks to my friend Nancy W.G. for posting this on FB a few days ago):
“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”
So for me, "life's change agent" has intensified my passion for music, more than ever. I've been engaged with music since childhood, but this new phase of life has given me the time and opportunity to dive even deeper.
In addition to taking voice lessons and singing in a chorus, I'm starting to read Daniel Levitin's new book, I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine. In my Substack essay dated 8-8-24 ("Music That Moves Me"), I mentioned that he would be giving a talk based on it at the Boston Museum of Science. He did, and now the talk is available for all of us on their YouTube channel. The talk, "Music as Medicine," features Levitin along with Livingston Taylor, brother of James. I'm watching that too. Music is my multivitamin!
from the Museum's YouTube page: "Featuring renowned neuroscientist Daniel Levitin and celebrated musician Livingston Taylor, in "Music as Medicine", watch as these two visionaries come together to discuss the health benefits of music and its ability to impact our health wellness. With Daniel Levitin’s deep understanding of the science behind music and Livingston Taylor’s experience as a performer, they share unique insights into how music can benefit us all."
Here is a link to the YouTube video - enjoy!
I've asked myself whether all of this music stuff is just self-indulgent ... and perhaps my time would be better spent by doing other things. But Steve Jobs says, "You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart." And I think that by following my heart with music, I will have an even deeper wellspring of love and joy that I can share with others ... as a better person and a better friend and a better citizen of the planet.
And now I close the way I began, quoting the song from the young protagonist in that amazing oratorio. "I'M ALIVE! ... I'm Alive - I'm Alive - I'm Alive!"
How do you stay alive? We will surely die, as we all know --- but why not stay maximally alive as long as we can?
Tears filled my eyes as I read your wonderful essay, Hal. "I"m Alive - I'm Alive - I'm Alive!" Yes, Yes, & Yes!
My first encounter with this phenomenon of lived experience was when my brother Stephen died - by suicide. The excruciating reality of losing a loved one will first kill you (I felt a major part of me died when he did)...and then, if we're willing (as Jobs & Oliver attest)...a new relationship to Life is made possible. And, I would assert, to one's Self.
This has been my experience, losing Stephen, and a granddaughter, Camryn, and a friend, Marsha, all within 6 months of one another...and many other kinds of deaths: of friendships and marriages and - the-way-I-thought-things-would-go to the-way-things-went kind of deaths - big deaths and little deaths...each one offering me the opportunity to choose LIFE! And I do, daily...sometimes in each minute (when awareness makes the choice real).
Writing and publishing my book of poetry, Love and Other Expressions of the Self, is my ode to waking up to life (God, Love & Self) after a lifetime of living with the impact of the death-of-self (identity) that resulted from early childhood familial sexual abuse. It expresses my awakening from psychological/emotional cut-offs (deaths) as a child to being fully alive as an adult!
There's something too, about this kind of awakening, it's not for anyone else - it's for one's very own Self! ENJOY!
Mary Oliver is one of my very favorite poets. I appreciate the way you mine precious keepsakes from her work and weave them into your thoughtful posts. Her poems are like that icy kick in the Swimming Lesson, sending ripples across the pond that they may touch others’ wakes.