Loud

I thought I could sit in the peace and stillness of the morning with my cup of coffee and the beauty of my garden, but alas, the music in the basement has begun and the noise begins its escalation to the heights of the trees where it will remain throughout the day and continue into the late night hours.

I used to enjoy this cacophony, this modal harmony of the minds of young artists finding their voices in a sea of notes and rhythms.  Now I just want some peace.  Is this old age?  I don’t want to hear the dissonant notes, the practice songs, the scales, the vocal techniques repeated over and over again till perfection is reached.

I just want harmony in life now.  And protection for my overworked ears. I have stood in front of booming amplifiers most of my life, the Marshall stacks and the Fender Super Reverbs.  The bigger the better, we would say.  “My amp goes to eleven”!

Now I am horrified to hear the dreaded words of my youth coming out of my very own mouth.  “Can you PLEASE turn it down”?!  Horrors!  I have become an adult!

After scaring myself back to my youth where I lived in a perpetual state of loud, I fast forward through the sounds of drums, guitars, bass amps, horn sections, Hammond organs and Jimmy Paige vocals to today, where my son and his band prepare for a gig later this evening.  It is 10AM, an unheard of hour for band practice.

How can they call themselves musicians?  They should still be in bed.  But alas, we live in a town of poets and writers, architects and artists, a quiet contemplative place where people search for their souls in words, Froebel blocks and paint, not steel strings, drum skins and high frequency wattages.

A farm on forty acres is where we need to be – me in the farmhouse overlooking the trees and vegetation I have come to love, to balance the old rock star of youth – and the boys, in a barn way down in the valley, where they can serenade the birds and crickets. 

It’s a balance nowadays between the noise of my youth and the quiet I now covet.  In the pause between the pendulum clicks of the metronome is where the music expands, the liminality of what was and what is.  That is the place I like to play in now.  I can still hear the music here; believe me.  It will live in me forever.  Like Kiki Dee once sang, I Got the Music in Me.  So Please.  Turn that music down.