San Bernardino, CA: I am fortunate enough to work in the music industry, with artists’ whose songs evoke such personal emotion. But when it’s your job, you sometimes tend to lose the passion you once had or forget about the reason you got into in the first place: the music itself. To re-energize my soul and reconnect with my roots, I took a trip out west.
As I mentioned before, I spent a few days on the road with my former boss, my best friend and two of my musical heroes.
I was introduced to the Indigo Girls when I was in college by a friend who would play me their music over and over again, begging me to listen – just listen – to their lyrics:
“And my bitter pill to swallow is this silence that I keep,
it poisons me, I can’t swim free, the river is too deep.
Though I’m baptized by your touch, I am no worst at most,
In love with your ghost.”
Once I started listening to their songs, I couldn’t stop. These stories – MY stories – that had been swirling in my head with no outlet of their own were somehow on the lips of these women. Obviously, the themes of love and loss are universal, but the way they phrased emotions and heartache (poetry in motion, if you will) were enough to make me blush –
how do they know me so well? It isn’t a complete coincidence that the color indigo is used to symbolically represent the sixth chakra, which is believed to be related to intuition and spiritual knowledge.
So, with the sea and waves as the backdrop, I allowed myself to simply be a part of the elements, and ask these two intuitive souls to fill me up with their words. What I realized is most of my experiences throughout the years can be linked to one of their songs. They are, in theory, writing the soundtrack to my life.
In fact, in a two-hour set, they virtually laid out the tale of one of my last relationships. From the sweet beginnings of the “getting to know you” stage:
“I half believe if I just picture us,
we will come true
Wishful thinking or my hopes sinking
half depends on you.
There are a thousand things about me
I want only you to know
But I can’t go there alone,
you’ve got to show.”
“You’ve Got To Show”
To the bitter truth of “it’s just not working anymore”:
“It’s funny what you know and still go on pretending
with no good evidence you’ll ever see that happy ending.
I had to learn the hard way
That we were just an empty dream
too big for hope alone to fill.”
“Hope Alone”
And for good measure, the “I know it’s over but, damnit, I’m lonely” period (usually fueled by a good bottle of wine):
“Well I guess that I was lonely,
that’s why I called you on the phone
‘cause in a moment of forgiveness
I didn’t want to be alone.
Baby I woke up cryin’ last night
just to realize that you were gone
Has it been two long years without you…
when are you gonna come home.”
“Moment of Forgiveness”
As the lyrics conjured up both the blissful and painful memories, I was fueled by the energy the Girls gave me that night. Beyond the songs of relationships long past, they also offered me a mantra to hold tight to:
“A lesson learned,
a loving God
and things in their own time…
in nothing more do I trust.”
“Everything In Its Own Time”
At the end of my revival, I left with yet another feeling of
hope. This, I believe, is what the journey is all about – the small steps of finding your way again, the embracing the things you hold closest to your heart (even if you tried to ignore them for so long) and the music to accompany these beautifully imperfect scenes.
Now I’ll just have to wait until their new album is released to find out what the next phase of life holds for me…..
