“The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas…”

“Outside the street’s on fire in a real death waltz, between what’s flesh and what’s fantasy”

These are just a few of my very favorite lines from some songs, actually the line about the moon is from The Highwayman, a poem by Alfred Noyes, that I was required to read and analyze while in high school it was later put to music by Phil Ochs, a very simple voice and guitar singing the exact poem.

Music has always been a major part of my life, I measure many of my experiences by what was playing at the time and certain songs immediately bring back memories, both good and bad, it has been even more important since the kerfuffle that is Covid. I have geared back from seemingly incessant TV watching and have gone back to playing music almost all the time. It’s easy now with Alexa and streaming, even more so having discovered an independent radio station while in Vermont (104.7 THE POINT). Having had the opportunity to do a lot of thinking while reading and listening I’ve realized something that I’ve always known but really had put on the back burner, that being, how incredibly lucky and thankful I am to have had a broad education as a very young man. I was required to read and analyze poetry, history, works of literature from the classics to the contemporary, the key points being READ and WRITE.

There is so much power and beauty in words, I am incredibly jealous of all who can “turn a phrase” whether it’s in print or in song, the ability that great writers have to, in brevity, paint a picture more vivid than anything your eyes will see on an HDTV is not only a talent but truly an expression of, and often from, the soul.

I am so thankful that I was “forced” to engage in this kind of learning, I was too wet behind the ears to even have a clue what the long play was or how meaningful it would become, and yes, I complained vigorously about “wasting time” on such things and reading things I didn’t see (at the time) had any merit. Fortunately those adults (back then) not only didn’t mollify my “being upset” but simply marched on with or without my compliance. My folks, who by any comparison were undereducated (dad a HS dropout, mom a HS graduate but followed the path set forth for lower middle class women back then, secretarial studies) still encouraged me to read and discuss things. I was lucky enough to have had a second grade teacher (Sister Callista at St. Brendan’s in the Bronx) who replied to my mother’s complaint that I was constantly reading comic books with the following “I don’t care if he reads a cereal box, if he loves to read, give him anything with words and let him have at it”

Lyrical turns in songs both those I’ve loved for years and those I keep discovering always give me pause and keep me thinking about how better to say something whether it’s to my friends, my kids, my incredible wife, or to explain better to the classes I still teach…..”words matter” they hear over and over and over…

Imagine for a moment, knowing how much funnier yet poignant, these lyrics are from a Warren Zevon song about death (“My Ride’s Here”) if you know who he’s referring to in these lines

“Shelley and Keats were out in the street
And even Lord Byron was leaving for Greece
While back at the Hilton, last but not least
Milton was holding his sides”

Just so musings while listening to various songs this afternoon….and somehow hoping those who shaped these things for me know how special they were and how grateful I am.