August 17: "More Than a Woman," Music, Heartbreak and Yodeling

Most of my weekends are filled with music.  On slow weekends, I play the keyboard/pipe organ at two churches.  Busy weekends--it's three, sometimes four churches.  I've been doing this since I was about 17 years old.  I can't remember a time when music wasn't a big part of my existence.

This afternoon, I spent a couple hours practicing songs for this weekend's worship services--one Catholic and one Lutheran.  A lot of people wonder why I practice music that I've played so much.  I will admit that most hymns are pretty familiar to me, be they Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, or Baptist.  The tune for "Amazing Grace" is the same no matter what denomination is singing it.  However, it's always the music I know best that unfailingly gives me problems.  So, I practice everything.

Usually, one of these weekend songs gets stuck in my head for three or four days.  I hear it all day, every day.  This weekend, it's a song titled "Lead Me, Lord."  I played it at tonight's Mass as the priest was marching up the aisle.  It's pretty rousing--almost a call to action.  It's got a good beat, and you can dance to it, as they used to say on American Bandstand.

Billy Collins deals with an ear worm in today's poem . . .

"More Than a Woman"

by: Billy Collins

Ever since I woke up today, 

a song has been playing uncontrollably 

in my head--a tape looping 

over the spools of the brain, 

a rosary in the hands of a frenetic nun, 

mad fan belt of a tune. 

It must have escaped from the radio

last night on the drive home 

and tunneled while I slept 

from my ears to the center of my cortex. 

It is a song so cloying and vapid 

I won’t even bother mentioning the title, 

but on it plays as if I were a turntable 

covered with dancing children 

and their spooky pantomimes, 

as if everything I had ever learned 

was slowly being replaced 

by its slinky chords and the puff-balls of its lyrics. 

It played while I watered the plants 

and continued when I brought in the mail 

and fanned out the letters on a table. 

It repeated itself when I took a walk 

and watched from a bridge 

brown leaves floating in the channels of a current. 

Late in the afternoon it seemed to fade, 

but I heard it again at the restaurant 

when I peered in at the lobsters 

lying on the bottom of an illuminated 

tank which was filled to the brim 

with their copious tears. 

And now at this dark window 

in the middle of the night 

I am beginning to think 

I could be listening to music of the spheres, 

the sound no one ever hears 

because it has been playing forever, 

only the spheres are colored pool balls, 

and the music is oozing from a jukebox 

whose lights I can just make out through the clouds.

I do believe that we are surrounded by music all day.  Medieval writers and thinkers referred to it as the music of the spheres.  Basically, they thought that the movement of the planets and celestial bodies created heavenly harmonies that played constantly.  However, since this noise was always present, human beings simply didn't notice it or became immune to it.

Now, we know that space is a vacuum, and, therefore, soundwaves simply can't exist in it.  However, the world is full of sounds.  I'm sitting on my couch typing this post, and there is a fan humming away in front of me.  When I finally go to bed tonight, I will lie in bed, listening to the noises my house makes in the dark--creaks and settlings and scratchings.  In the morning, there will be crows and mourning doves singing outside my window.  In colder months, my furnace will rumble to life every once in a while.

This is the music of the spheres, I think.  Everyday sounds that we just ignore.  Some people ask me where I get ideas for my poems,  (I'm sure musicians get the same question about their songs.)  Here is my answer:  I listen to what's all around me, and I write it down.  Sometimes, it's a hymn about searching for love or joy.  Other times, it's an old Hank Williams tune filled with heartbreak and yodeling.  If you pay close enough attention, you can hear it, too.

Saint Marty can hear a cold piece of pizza calling him from the fridge right now.  It sort of sounds like Dean Martin singing "That's Amore."