Whoa. Where does THIS come from?

[aadler]

There was a time in my life when I lived in music.

Actually, there have been a lot of such times, but I’m thinking of a particular period. Two periods, if we want to be precise, but they’re … thematically linked. First was the period when I was increasingly (inescapably) aware of my wife’s growing unhappiness, and wished desperately that I could find some way of addressing and satisfying that unhappiness. Certain songs in my mind are linked to that period; I won’t name them, but think of stuff by the Statler brothers, Randy Travis, and Lyle Lovett (this one the only thing by that man that I ever liked, though I don’t dislike him personally, it’s just that in general his music wasn’t my type of music). This was followed by the period when she had already filed for divorce, and then divorced me, and the immediate years after that when I had to accustom myself to the reality that she was gone and she wasn’t coming back (now we’re looking at Garth Brooks, Diamond Rio … honestly, I don’t really like country music that much but it definitely fit those linked times of my life).

For some reason, those songs are running through my mind lately.

This is not foreshadowing, not foreboding. There are no storm clouds gathering in our relationship; any such would have taken place during the three years she was living separately from me in California, working on her ‘high three’ for retirement, but we finished that time as scheduled and she’s back now (again, as scheduled), and we’re making plans and taking action for a joint future.

Maybe I’m just maudlin. Maybe it’s unfocused nostalgia. Maybe it’s me working through the last of the Everclear (mixed with other stuff, God! you don’t ever want to drink that awful crap straight!), maybe it’s just randomness and impulse. I’m going with it, though, singing along with Alexa and remembering days filled with a sadness that I don’t have to live with now but that I can look back upon with retrospective analysis and a certain indulgent smugness.

Oddly enough, there are no songs that, for me, typify the period during which she and I reconnected, and began thinking of a new future together, and then embarked on it. Maybe because we were actually doing those things then, rather than me looking about (sadly? helplessly? aimlessly? ‘lost’ly?) for something to represent the reality I didn’t know how to deal with.

(Well, there’s one particular plaintive piece from Rod Stewart. But the only time I tried to sing that in karaoke, I humiliated myself by my utter ineptitude in the high registers.)

I truly don’t know how I found myself where I am. But I am inexpressibly grateful to be here.

Comments

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

I think the isolation and general stuckness of the current pandemic has us all a little maudlin. Sorry, but when you started listing off all these country artists all I could think of was Xander and his, "music of pain." Actually, I love country music, grew up with it. I'm very glad you and your wife were able to get back on the path of life together.

[aadler]

It was a miracle that I’d long ago given up hoping for. Didn’t mean I didn’t grab onto it as firmly (and carefully) as I could, once it turned out to be possible after all.