Front Porch: Music alive with memories

I was reminded recently how deeply music can move me and how important it is in our lives. How generations speak through it and how listening to it is listening to what society has to say.

Or as Dick Clark, the American cultural icon, probably best known for hosting TV’s “American Bandstand” for 30 years, put it: “Music is the soundtrack of your life.”

I’d kind of forgotten that, as I’m in the nostalgia phase of my relationship with music and no longer much involved. Forgive me an old fogy moment here, but a lot, though not all, of new music (“new” covering probably the past 20 years or so) doesn’t especially sing to me.

I’m OK with that. I’m not the demographic that much current music is targeting, though I really should pay closer attention.

Nothing makes me happier than listening to the music of my youth and early adult years – Peter Paul & Mary, Simon & Garfunkel, Linda Ronstadt, Pete Seger, Aretha Franklin … with some Elvis, Doors, Crosby Stills & Nash and some others thrown in. But I’m not even doing that these days.

Last week, Bruce and I were watching “The Day the Music Died,” about the creation and release in 1971 of Don McLean’s mega-classic song “American Pie.” The title of the streaming documentary comes from a line in the song which opens with five words that old folks and young people alike know well, and which, when heard in any setting – bar, tailgate event or wherever – starts an immediate sing along. Those words are: “Bye Bye Miss American Pie.”

And as most people who were musically aware back in the day know, it’s about the deaths in a plane crash of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper … and so much more. It became an anthem of sorts. And very up-tempo at that.

There’s another McLean song (released in the same “American Pie” album) that resonated even more with me, and as we were watching the documentary, that other song worked its way into my head and has resided there as an ear worm since. “Vincent,” a deceptively sweet-sounding ballad with a beautiful mixture of major and minor chords, is recognized by those of us whose musical memory is most vibrant with tunes from back in that era by its opening three words: “Starry Starry Night …”

Odd at the time for a popular music hit, it is about the Dutch impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh, whose brilliance was not recognized in his time (the late 1800s) and who died at his own hand at age 37. Lyrics of the song are sung ever so sweetly and pierce ever so deeply. They can take the mind to so many places, particularly to thoughts about not being heard in this world, about unrealized vision and especially images of those who have died – people of any age who we have loved, taken by illness or without a chance to grow up, by suicide or accident, or just by the course of time.

Haunting words surrounded by sweet sound.

And so my mind went there. I thought again the 20-month-old toddler we knew whose brain tumor took him way too young. Of my friend Michelle, who shared the same birthday with me and who was killed in a car accident when we were in high school. Of my grand-nephew, who put a gun to his head a few weeks after his 14th birthday. Of my 87-year-old friend in Florida, who died of a stroke some years ago after living the most extraordinary life, one which began in New Zealand and which brought her to America as war bride in World War II.

Of so many people who have meant so much to me, which allowed me to think about what they did achieve in life and what they left undone or never had the chance to reach for, about the joy that knowing them brought me. It’s been a heartfelt journey, but not a maudlin one. Revisiting “Vincent” has allowed me to again visit in my memory so many dear friends.

A song did that.

Music has the power to capture and let loose so much feeling and to connect us to one another. And I’ve been so disconnected from music for way too long.

Actor/comedian Robin Williams once asked and answered this question: “You know what music is? God’s little reminder that there’s something else besides us in the universe, a harmonic connection between all living beings, everywhere, even the stars.”

I’ve started listening again.

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by email at upwindsailor@comcast.net.