Music – Life is So Beautiful

This is the introductory essay from this week’s issue of my weekly newsletter, Life Is So Beautiful. The entire newsletter, including links to five things I thought were beautiful, can be found here. – HH

I did something earlier this month I have not done in at least twelve years: I bought a CD.

I don’t mean I added an album to my streaming playlist. And I didn’t even buy the MP3 version. I mean, I bought a physical CD, which somebody (probably a robot) put in a padded envelope, and I waited three days, and it was in my mailbox.

It happened like this: I was doing some digital cleanup because my hard drive was at 75% capacity, and I’m a digital hoarder. It was a rainy day, and I had a horrible headache (rainy days always give me headaches) so I put on my rainy day jazz playlist and just started deleting things. Do I really need that screenshot from five years ago?

No, I do not.

Which is when I came across a folder on my computer called “Music”. I had honestly forgotten it was there. And in it were dozens of albums of music I own, and hundreds of individual songs. The Beatles. America. Thelonious Monk. Taize. Albert King. The Beastie Boys.

Some I can remember which record store I bought them from; remember standing in the store, listening to the samples over the headphones. Others I bought online as MP3s. Some go all the way back to the Limewire and Napster days.

Longtime readers may be shocked to discover I own this much music because I have stated often in these pages that I’m not really a music person. But that is only true if my basis of comparison is my wife, whose relationship to music is very different from my own. She feels music in a way that I do not, to the point she has preferred recordings of individual songs.

My own relationship to music is much more pedestrian: There is music I like, and music I don’t, but I don’t have music constantly playing in my car or office, I don’t go to live shows, and I’m tone deaf.

And in the old days, when I heard songs I liked, I would buy those CDs so I could listen whenever I wanted. But then streaming came along, and now I can listen to almost anything I want, whenever I want.

But I’m trying to live a life less dependent on companies owned by billionaires these days. After 25 years of being chronically online, I’m trying to distance myself from a life dependent on an internet connection. And I recognize streaming services pay the artists squat.

So when I found myself in a mood to listen to Dylan, rather than tell the device, “Alexa, play Bob Dylan”, I went online and bought a CD (his second album, which I did not own). And when it arrived, I ripped the songs to that folder on my hard drive, and then I put the CD on the shelf, so I have them, even if my computer should die a horrible death.

I know buying one CD changes nothing, not really. But it means I am ever so slightly more independent from companies that have very different agendas than mine. And these days, any independence is worth celebrating.

This is the introductory essay from this week’s issue of my newsletter, Life Is So Beautiful. The entire newsletter, including links to five things I thought were beautiful, can be found here.

Because of the tropical storms hitting the gulf, it has been raining here near nonstop for a week, which reminded me of this memory:

It was a steamy, hot day in the summer of 2015. It had been raining for days, and never stopped long enough for things to dry out. In the day shelter I ran for unhoused people, the mood was horrible. Many of these folks lived in tents, and their clothes and bedding were all soaked, and some of them had their entire campsites washed away, all their possessions now destroyed. Everyone and everything smelled damp. Fights were breaking out, as tempers soared and attitudes plummeted.

Ours was a drop-in shelter, and so while we might have 120 folks come through on any given day, there was never more than twenty to thirty at any given time. Now, all of them were piled in our little facility. In the day room, fifty people crowded in a space that would comfortably hold twenty five. Our resources had been quickly depleted – we had run out of coffee, run out of fresh clean socks, had run out of sleeping bags, and were rapidly running out of patience.

Outside, the rain just kept coming. Mud was everywhere.

One of our guests was a young Black man named Chris. He had aged out of foster care, meaning that when his foster parents no longer received a stipend for his care when he turned 18, he was turned out, and ended up on the streets. Chris was educated and well spoken and was particular about his appearance, and our new volunteers were always shocked to learn he stayed at the men’s shelter downtown.

In the corner of our dayroom was an electric keyboard someone had given us when it didn’t sell at their yard sale. It largely went ignored, but this day, as soon as he walked in, Chris walked over to it, shooed away the person sitting on the bench, and sat down. He placed his fingers on the keys and it came to life, as he began to play and sing Prince’s Purple Rain.

I never meant to cause you any sorrow

I never meant to cause you any pain

I only wanted, one time, to see you laughing

I only want to see you laughing

In the purple rain

One by one, the folks in that crowded room began to sing this song everyone knew. Their sorrowful voices filled the air, and then people at the other end of the building, in the clothing closet and the resource rooms and even in our offices joined in. It was as if, for a brief moment in time, in the midst of the damp and the misery and the suffering, heaven shone through, and this song, beautifully played, gave us all a moment of respite from all that held us down.

When he finished, the mood in the building had changed. And, you will swear I am lying, but while we were singing, the rain had stopped, and the sun came out. It was one of those everyday miracles we all see from time to time.

These days, 11 years later, Purple Rain is on my playlist. It is just one example of how I have tried to structure my life so I am reminded of the miracles I have seen, and want to never forget.