Soundtrack of a Life

“He was only ever interested in music and the transfer of energy, which he considered the same thing.”

This is a line written about Josiah Fells, the father in the Showtime series “The Man Who Fell to Earth.“ This series is based upon the 1963 Walter Nevis novel, of the same name and picks up the story after the place where the 1976 David Bowie movie ends.

Josiah, (played by actor Charlie Peters) is an interesting character a tinkering, innovating scientist who builds kinetic sculptures, is a kick-ass jazz guitarist and, in the plot, is given the job of creating a cold fusion generator to power a spaceship to send the alien home, using music.

The line struck me to the point that I rewound the DVR to write it down verbatim.

I ruminated on it at the time and now six months later I’ve come upon the page in my notebook where I recorded those ruminations.

Music is notes, a specialized notation, an alphabet, a language of tones, of frequencies and particular durations – whole notes, half notes, quarters, eighths, triplets, etc. The frequencies vary – melody and harmony, keys, chords, dissonance and harmonics. The durations vary by rhythm, tempo, or patterns of time.

According to the first law of thermodynamics, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but it can be transformed from one form to another. There are two types of energy transfer, thermal and kinetic.

A light bulb transforms electricity to heat and then to light, an example of thermal energy transfer. Imagine kinetic transfer; I swing a golf club, which (in a perfect world) hits a small white ball and transfers the kinetic energy of my swing to the ball, launching it for two hundred yards straight down the fairway, (or in my case into the air as I whiff or into the ball shanked thirty yards into the rough).

In the natural world there are different types of thermal energy transfer, conduction, convection and radiation and there are different processes that facilitate that transfer, such as chemical (oxidation – think fireworks, light, heat and boom-sound waves), and nuclear (fission, -you know, splitting uranium atoms to power your hair dryer creating leftovers with a 600-year use-by date).

Kinetic energy is often transferred through work (pushing the car out of the garage) or redirected e, g,, engine rotational energy pivoted ninety degrees by transmission gears to the wheels.

This is as far as 12^th grade physics transfers through my worn neural pathways and compromised synapses.

But music. . . sound waves. .  can transfer to kinetic energy from toe tapping to dancing, (which, I think, my kids would still rather I didn’t do in public).

“Music can change the world because it can change people.” – Bono

What the lead singer of the Irish rock band rings true if you have ever been to a live music concert. It doesn’t matter what genre of music. A performance is usually planned to engage, draw in, the energy of the audience and take them through various moods, peaking at a climax and leaving  them a little more “energized” than when they arrived. Think about that. We come in to a concert as individuals each with our own joys and frustrations and share a set of emotions driven by the sound wave energy of a performance. It’s what people mean when they say “music unites people.”

Some of my most profound experiences with music have been at protest marches singing “We shall overcome,” led by Pete Seeger or Joan Baez. I shared solidarity with those working for civil rights, ending hunger, or ending a war. The music wasn’t enough, but it was a start.

“Music doesn’t lie. If something needs to be changed in the world, then it can only be changed through music.” – Jimi Hendrix

“Music is the soundtrack of your life.” – Dick Clark

Some may have no idea who Dick Clark is. Some may remember him from countless New Year’s celebrations broadcast on live TV from Times Square in New York City. For me Dick Clark will always be the host of American Bandstand, where I learned about the transition from 1950s dance ballads to Rock-a-Billy to rock and roll.

Let me be clear, I do not consider myself a musician.

Yes, my father was a singer, a professionally trained bass, who sang with the Handel Hayden chorus in Boston. We sang a lot in our home, and I still sing a lot in the shower. I can turn almost any conversation into a song using lyrics from many musical genres, a trait that those who love me put up with, while groaning and telling me how truly annoying it is.

And yes, I have played at guitar since I was thirteen and write some folky, country, rock-ish songs. But real musicians dedicate themselves to the craft. They read music and write in music notation. I’m a music hack, (that’s not being modest or self-deprecating) and I’m OK with that.

Still, music has been a large part of my life. As an eleven-year-old Boy Scout, I loved campfire singalongs led by Scoutmaster Ed Hoxie, and laughed at the Tom Lehrer songs he sang.

“About a maid I’ll sing a song, sing rickety-tickety-tin. About a maid I’ll sing a song, who didn’t have her family long. Not only did she do them wrong, she did every last one of them in.”

When I was thirteen, I got the six-string pictured above and spent $285, earnings from caddy camp, on a stereo, which for 1962 was one helluva sound system. I only just finally sold the speakers about five years ago. My first album purchase was Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin, which shocked my parents, who had no idea I would even know who Gershwin was. My first 45 was Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” by Peter, Paul and Mary, which I sang along with at the top of my rebellious teenage lungs.

At fifteen I was cast as Billy Bigelow, the lead in the musical “Carousel,” which probably saved my life, as I was hanging out with a group of street-fighting vandals, most of whom ended up dead or jailed before twenty.

This was a turning point in my life, which is why the Billy Joel song “Keeping the Faith” resonates so much with me:

“’cause I never felt the desire to let music set me on fire, and then I was saved, yeah -That’s why I’m keeping the faith. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Keeping the Faith.”

The next year I played the King in “The King and I,” went to college and studied theatre, playing Matt in “The Fantasticks.”

Of course, I ultimately gave up musicals, and theatre, but I continued to listen and explore music. For years, I picked up the guitar, whenever I felt a little blue, or exuberant, or contemplative. In my thirties I wrote my first songs. In retirement I wrote some more and copyrighted nine songs and I have seven more in different stages of completion.

I have discovered that listening to and singing the blues gets me over the blues. I am aware of the absurdity this displays as highlighted by George Carlin:

“What do white people have to sing the blues about? Banana Republic ran out of chinos?”

I have written parodies of my love of the blues and I love Martin Mull’s “Ukelele Blues:”

“I woke up this mornin’ ‘n’ saw both cars were gone. . . and I feel so low-down, I threw my drink across the lawn.”

I listen to my vinyl albums, (yes, I still have a turntable). And while I agree with Neil Young that analog sound production is much better than digital, I do sometimes listen to a Spotify shuffle when I walk.

I love all kinds of music, blues, rock, reggae, country, folk, jazz -especially trad-jazz, Coltrane, Davis, Gillespie and Armstrong, big bands, and classical, even opera, though I’m more partial to Pavarotti than Callas. I remember when I first discovered different genres – Sam Kopper, on WBCN -Boston introduced me to reggae. Paul Grazda, who I worked with, introduced me to the musicologist-artist Ry Cooder in 1976 and I’ve followed Ry ever since, through all his iterations, film scores, world music, Buena Vista Social Club, and “No Banker Was Left Behind,” his response to the TARP bailout in 2008.

I’m still learning about music. The other guitars in the picture are cigar box guitars. The tree-string on the left was made by my son for my seventieth birthday. The other two, “Punch Rose,” and the four-string resonator “Black Copper” were Covid projects,  built with video instruction from Shane Speal (“King of the Cigar Box Guitar”) and his book “Poor Man’s Guitar.” These were my first electric guitars and I’m contemplating buying an amp upgrade from the 2 ½ watt one Zac built, and maybe a Classic Vibe Strat or a Gretsch Streamliner.

“How many guitars do you need?” Even a hack guitarist like me can use the response of guitarists everywhere. “Maybe just one. . . more.”

So music is the soundtrack of my life. I have a make-me-feel-better playlist that includes “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley, (“Don’t worry about a thing, ‘cause every little thing is gonna be alright”) “Honky-Tonk Women” by the Rolling Stones, and the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s ninth symphony.

What’s on yours?

“Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace abolishing strife.” — Kahlil Gibran

And if there is some hope that music might unite us and change the world, what should we be listening to or playing?