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The
Songs from ... he
used to be
Somebody by Beverly Bigtree Murphy |
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"...I found myself listening more and more to the nostalgic channels on the radio and dragging out my Ella Fitzgerald and Big Band records. It is no accident that the songs that began each chapter found their way into this book. They are our songs, Tom’s and mine. They were as much a part of Tom’s history as they were mine and the lyrics speak of a time when romance and love and commitment were expected. That we chanced to meet long after those songs drifted into the recesses of our memories is a moot point. The important point is that they were always there as if we had grown up on them together. I have chosen to make them the expression of the life we shared rather than dwell on the present that is our reality. I have chosen to grasp on to an image of a better place, a place where Tom and I can pick up where we left off and finally, fly together. This was after all, a love story." Excerpt "he used to be Somebody,": Epilogue - I'll Be Seeing You.
The lyrics of 15 standard love songs begin each chapter in this book. The songs became an integral part of the story telling and the book just wasn't complete without them. How they came about is something many who have read the book want to know. Like so much of what drives life, their emergence and then presence in the writing might be described as an interesting happenstance. But, I have come to think about how our subconscious works in relationship to the world we face and I wonder about the method that often emerges from the madness. My sisters and I had grown up as performers on radio and television in the 40's and 50's in upstate New York. Music and dance. Its what propelled me then and in many ways it is what has propelled me through most of my life. The music is ever present with me. In fact, there is usually some part of my body, a toe tapping, a foot waving, a hand bouncing, always in rhythm to some mindless song circulating in my subconscious mind. I think most of us have experienced the phenomena of 'the mindless song in the brain.' A tune is repeated over and over, almost like a mantra, and one we never really bring to the conscious mind until someone asks what we're humming and then we become self-conscious about it and laugh. Usually the song is something we'd heard on the radio, or part of a commercial, or triggered by something a friend said in passing. The phrase, "I can't seem to get it out of my head," is one that is familiar to most of us at some time or another. Generally, once the existence of the song is brought to conscious awareness we try to dismiss it. But inevitably, as soon as our minds are distracted by other conscious thoughts, the song returns to take its place back in that cloudy world of the subconscious once more. I learned that if I took the time to look at the symbolic language of the so called 'mindless song,' I'd sometimes discover its wasn't as mindless as expected. Often the song expressed some inner fear, some anxiety I was facing, or some pending moment of fun on the horizon. Nothing I'd base a life decision on you might say but something that led me to appreciate that the song my brain had chosen, actually did relate to what I was feeling at the moment. The songs that found their way into this book were the result of such moments. It was a phenomena that evolved over the years of writing this book and I found that when I reached an impasse in the writing, it usually was the 'mindless tune in the mind,' that held a key to that impasse. I remember the very first time it happened and I also remember the agony of sitting down to start this project. I knew one thing for certain, this book was going to happen. I had never written anything for publication before but I had a complete belief that I would be able to do this. However seeing it finished in my mind and doing it were two different things. It had been days of organizing notes, setting a chronology, and deciding what part of the story would appear in which chapters. I had done all the busy work one does before the words begin to appear on paper but the words weren't appearing. The book was at a halt before it started and there were feelings of failure all around. Tom wasn't sleeping, he was pacing all day and most of the night, he had turned into the 'Energizer Bunny' and I wondered if I was going to survive any part of what lay ahead of us. And here I was trying to write the great love story. The irony of that was only exceeded by the absurdity of trying to write this book in the first place. How could I possibly relate our reality and still offer the reader something positive about this experience of ours? And then I realized I had been humming one of those mindless tunes for days. The song turned out to be "Let's Face The Music And Dance." The words to that wonderful Irving Berlin song said it all to me. "Let's face the Music and Dance," is actually one of the great Astaire and Rogers numbers of all time and once that realization hit my conscious brain, I knew exactly where the humming of this song had come from. I had watched "Follow The Fleet," the few days earlier, during one of my procrastinations over turning on the computer, and couldn't get the major dance sequence in that movie out of my mind. Every time I started to think about it, I started to cry. It made no sense to me at all, I had barely concentrated on the movie I had seen it so many times. However, unlike most of the Astaire/Rogers dance numbers this one told a story. It was a tableau that had a beginning, a middle, and an end, all reflecting the words of that poignant Berlin song, "Let's Face the Music and Dance." I immediately went out and rented the movie and watched that routine more closely this time. I suddenly realized that the dance was about life and living it in the face of hardship and the metaphor of 'Life as a Dance' made absolute sense to me.
"Something greater was happening. Their dance wasn’t just a dance anymore, it was a symbolic expression of life. And isn’t that what life is all about? Isn’t it about moving to a rhythm, following a lead, measuring the distance you’re expected to leap, and if it’s with a partner you trust and love then isn’t it just as simple as this, isn’t it a dance?" Excerpt: "he used to be Somebody," Prologue "Stardust."
That revelation gave me the link I needed and a positive way of looking at our life, and Alzheimer's, and it moved me back to the computer. The concept of 'Life as a Dance.' became the core of this book. The first thing I wrote was a description of that wonderful Astaire/Rogers dance routine. It was meant to be the last statement of our lives together and it became the last page of our book. I then went to the beginning and began to write our story. Needless to say, 'the mindless song in the brain,' was repeated over and over as the book unfolded until all 15 songs were gathered and we had returned full circle to the dance. My mother offered that if nothing else this book gives people the words to some of the most classic love songs ever written. Copyright laws do not permit my giving you the lyrics here but I thought it would nice to see which songs made there way into this book and in what order.
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