The Muse Gets Out of Its Cage

“Just as Jesus created wine from water, we humans are capable of transmuting emotion into music.” Carlos Santana


Hi, Mothers of Musicians (MOMS.) I love that quote.

There was a time when quoting Carlos Santana in a spiritual context would have been sacrosanct at best. Maybe just plain heretical. But times (and people) change, don’t they? Thank God!


My last blog left you with a promise to share how Bill and I put “limitations” on music in our household. Indulge me a moment and let me go back in time…say…thirty-one years.

I think I told you previously that Bill and I were products of 1960’s and 1970’s style music. Our generation worshipped at the altar of rock and roll and our lifestyles were representative of that culture. By 1978 I had become weary of that way of living, for to live it at all was to live it wholeheartedly, and after several years of “life in the fast lane,” I began to look back to the God of my youth and seek real freedom. This disenchantment lead me to Jesus Christ, His Holy Spirit, and a new value system emerged in me. I let most of my old relationships go and I forsook those things that I had taken on as my “identity.” I became a new creature in Christ. I got “saved.”

I’ll never forget. I came home from college and brought all of my belongings with me. I “spiritually” cleaned house. I ripped up all of my posters and pictures that pertained to my old “idols.” I took all of my albums out of their covers and broke them in half, one by one, putting them in the trashcan, wishing that I could burn them, but my mom told me that all of that vinyl would just melt and burn, stink and make a huge mess. So I sent the broken mess, which I thought represented my life, to the dump.

Now, I’m sure that you are saying, “Wait a minute, that’s too radical!” Maybe it was, maybe not, but at the time, I was just drawing a line between my old self and my new “Christ-like” self. It was all I knew how to do. I stopped listening to the radio, basically stopped going to the movies. I mainly tried to keep my mind based on what was “true, noble, right, pure, lovely and admirable. If there was anything excellent or praiseworthy to notice, I would consider that and think on it.”

That was a paradigm shift for my life. Everything, including my perception of things changed. I only listened to Christian music and for some reason, I felt comfortable with that. I found a quote by Hal A. Lingerman which explains it. “Just as certain selections of music will nourish the physical body and your emotional layer, so other musical works will bring greater health to your mind.” I believe that for years I had nourished my soul and physical body by identifying with the musical culture of the 1960’s and 1970’s.


By unplugging from that power source, I plugged into a different outlet, Christian music, and began to clean my mind and feed my spirit man.

I remember one morning as I was getting ready for work, I was watching the national news and Jane Pauley was announcing that John Lennon had been shot and killed the night before. I was stunned. His death awakened in me a tie to my past. As I took Bill to work that morning, I tried to find out more about his death on the radio. Each station was playing John Lennon songs. I left a station on and listened, still shocked by the news. Bill looked at me and said, “Why are you seeking the dead among the living? His death is sad, but shouldn’t concern us like it used to would have. We’re not really in that world anymore.”

I know that sounds harsh, but at the time, that is how we lived and what we thought. I totally missed all of the music of the 1980’s and early 1990’s. During that time I was having babies, nursing them, having more babies, establishing a home, home schooling and being the best mom I could be. I swore to myself, God and all of my friends that I would never let my kids listen to any kind of rock music on the radio.

As my older kids began to hit the teen and pre-teen years, something drastic happened. One day, while out on a shopping trip, I heard Natalie and Stacey sing along with a song that was playing over a store music system. It was a radio song and they knew every word. Rap was just coming out and I heard John rapping every word, spitting it out machine gun style. I was amazed. How did they know the words when they weren’t supposed to be listening to the radio? I asked them and they told me that the CD player I had gotten them for Christmas had a radio on it and at night, when they thought that Bill and I were asleep or not listening to what was going on upstairs, they would quietly play it.

I was distressed! My plan wasn’t working. How were my children going to be separate from “the world” and its evil nature? I thought I was failing them.

I was visiting my family up in North Carolina and happened to have dinner with my old high school friend and college buddy, Janet. Janet and I had been best friends for years and had struggled with the same issues of the 1970’s. Like me, she too had become a Christian.

Janet’s dad had always been in a bluegrass band. He played the bass and the piano by ear. Janet loved music as much, if not more than I did and she too had young children. I asked her if she were going to let her children listen to music on the radio. I believe at that time Hanson, 98 Degrees and Back Street Boys were dominating the radio scene. Was she going to let her children listen to them or strictly listen to Christian music? Without missing a beat, she looked at me and said, “Donna, music is music, whether it’s Christian or not. You know me, I love all of it.” And with that simple answer, my moratorium on rock music was lifted.




We did decide that if the kids were going to listen to rock music, they would have to be indoctrinated with some Rock and Roll history and not just accept “teeny bopper” style music as the only music on the face of the planet. Now I know, in retrospect that sounds snobby, but our household had been in a self-imposed musical drought for almost twenty years. We felt that teaching our children the background of the different bands was important. We wanted them to know that most of the musicians from that era had shaken off their bad habits or had died early from their over indulgences. What great life lessons for the kids to learn!

The first CD we bought John that wasn’t “Christian” was Peter Frampton’s “Frampton Comes Alive.” We wanted him to hear one of the greatest guitar solos in history. A few weeks later, (was this 1997?) we all sat as a family around our TV and watched a PBS special concert of “The Dance Tour” which was Fleetwood Mac performing their greatest hits and a few new songs. The concert held their attention just as Disney movies had in the past. A magical door to a cage had been opened, and the muse that had been silenced for so many years, came out, tickled our ears and created a desire that sent us all on a musical adventure that is still being played out to this day.

Well, it’s time to stop writing and get some things done around here for Christmas. Bill, Cody and I are heading up to Nashville next week to spend some time with our all of our children. I think that I will talk with them and get some of their impressions about the next part of our story. Stephen Nachmanovitch says that “The most potent muse of all is our inner child.” Christmas seems to always stir that inner child in all of us. I can’t wait to see where the muse takes us. Until then, Merry Christmas!

Warrior Poets Flirt with the Muse

“Music speaks what cannot be expressed, soothes the mind and gives it rest, heals the heart and makes it whole, flows from heaven to the soul.” Anonymous (I wish I could find the writer of this bit of truth.)

Hello, MOMS (Mothers of Musicians) I hope that your Thanksgiving holiday was all that you dreamed it would be. I must say that I had a magical Thanksgiving and that it exceeded my expectations.

Bill and I, along with our youngest son, Cody, went to Nashville, Tennessee, to spend my favorite holiday with the rest of our children, a few of their boy friends (who are musicians too) and their parents, my brother Scot, his wife Kelly, and their three children. There were twenty of us all piled into the small house that The Bridges (our kid’s band) rents and lives in. We rented extra tables and chairs, cleared out the band room and feasted like old pilgrim friends. It was wonderful!

All of the MOMS made their family’s traditional Thanksgiving dishes and together we ate and celebrated our reasons to be grateful. The highlight of the day was when we gathered in a huge circle around the room, lifted our glasses and made toasts to family ties, new friends and to the adventures of the future. We even toasted Madonna and her song, “Music Brings the People Together.” Later, after dessert, Kelly, my new friends Elaine and Vickie, and I sat at the table and talked for hours about our children and music. Inwardly, I marveled that we did not choose this gathering. It was music’s choice all along. It sought us out, brought us together and jotted us down as chords of black notes on white paper and the more the talked; the more we filled the page. Each small cluster of folks in the room, lent a layer of harmony, and before you knew it, music had written a beautiful background sound tract that played all afternoon. It was such a song of joy. We kept wondering “Why is this day going so well? We’re with people we don’t know that well, and yet, it doesn’t matter! It’s magical!” It was a day that God had blessed.

Oh well, enough of that. Most of you were not there and it’s not fair to go on about something that everybody didn’t experience. I do hope, though, that in your future gatherings, always listen for the background music that is written by those in attendance. It is fascinating!

All right, let’s shift gears now. I did promise you that I would tell you about how we started the musical learning experience for our children; but once again, some of my story is wrapped up in it too.

The year was 1998 and our oldest child, John, turned sixteen. Because all of our older children had had piano lessons and seemed to be interested in music, we got him a Yamaha guitar and a guitar chord wall poster that had every chord known to man on it. We thought he was born to play the guitar because he had strong hands with long fingers; hands that were made to play bar chords. The guitar sat in his room for a few months and finally, his sisters showed an interest in it and asked if they could learn how to play it.

During this time we had been playing the sound tracks for “Braveheart” and “The Titanic.” The songs had such a Celtic sound to them and I was drawn instantly and played them constantly. I was stirred by the quote in the beginning of the movie, “In the year of our Lord, 1314, patriots of Scotland starving and outnumbered, charged the fields of Bannockburn. They fought like warrior poets. They fought like Scotsmen. And won their freedom.”

Now I can’t say what it was about that quote that grabbed me so, maybe the “warrior poets” part, but combined with the movie sound tract, that duo was not just flirting with me but seduced me by the second date. I know now what it was (the Spirit of the Ancient of Days,) but at that time I only knew that when I heard the music and imagined myself a warrior poet, I was transformed into creativity’s lover, ready to create and write my own stream of words that flowed above my head every time the music began to play. I felt that I was tapping into something ageless and brilliant and to make it appear before me, all I had to do was play that type of music and the gate would open.

We had bought a CD at Wal-Mart, a Sound Scapes style CD that was all Irish music. There was one song that I would play over and over; Ashokan Farewell. It moved me to tears almost every time I heard it. It was one of the background songs in the PBS Special, The Civil War. As they played the song, they read letters that soldiers had written to loved ones back home and they would show actual pictures taken during the Civil War. To me, I thought that the soldiers sounded like warrior poets, their letters beautifully written but describing a hell they were living in. I would listen to that tract over and over, not realizing that the Spirit of the Ancient of Days was at my beck and call during that time. I just knew that a tremendous energy that inspired creativity was there, and for months, rested on our house.

I have since looked up “Ashokan Farwell.” Jay Ungar wrote it in 1982. It was not written during the Civil War and until that PBS Special, had nothing to do with the war. Mr. Ungar wrote it because he was involved with some summer workshops and was so sad to see them end and say goodbye to his friends that he wanted to find a Scottish lament to express his sorrow. He couldn’t find one and decided to write his own. I heard tangible sorrow in every note of that song. There was, however, one note that was played in the song that I actually thought the composer put in there to weep for him. I would feel grief spill out and over the notes as the violin played the forlorn song.

I walked into the girls room one day, during the time they were begging to learn how to play the guitar, and asked them to listen to the “Ashokan Farwell.” “All right, so if you want to learn how to play music, then tell me if you hear a note in this song that cries.” I played the song separately to Natalie first and then Stacey. Both of them heard the note the first time and pointed it out. “OK, that’s what I think too,” I said. “I just wanted to know if you would recognize the emotion there.” I just wanted to know if they were sensitive to music emotion. “OK, then, let’s get the guitar in John’s room and try a few things.

I began to play and sing a simple folk song, “Five Hundred Miles.” I then explained what melody and harmony were and asked them to sing a harmony note if they heard one. Rather embarrassed, Natalie softly sang a harmony line. She understood it. Stacey followed by singing harmony to my melody. I started switching it up. Natalie, you sing melody and Stacey you sing harmony. They got it.

The next lesson was how to hold a guitar and how to play simple chords. I taught them how to place their fingers and strum with different rhythms. I taught them everything I knew in a period of about three days. In about two weeks, they had totally by-passed me and were playing things I had only dreamed of playing. They followed the wall poster chart and they could play every chord. I was amazed.

The Spirit of the Ancient of Days rested upon our home for months. The kids learned the guitar with amazing speed and started singing songs with harmonies. Jeremy took an avid interest in the drums and we bought him his first drum kit, a 1963 Ludwig set. It was beautiful and let me just say, the boy learned to play!

Somehow we had tapped into creative purpose and it ran like a river through our home. Next blog, I’ll tell you about how Bill and I, as parents, put limitations on the music the children listened to and tell you how “well” that went over. Until then, “teach your children.”

The Muse in Me

“If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less, but to dream more, to dream all the time." Marcel Proust

Hello MOMS (Mothers of Musicians). In my last blog, I promised that I would tell you about the young musicians in my family. But for me to tell their story, I must also include mine, because our tale is as tangled as tree roots in a dense forest.

The characters in my story are as follows: Me - Donna Byrd, my husband - Bill Byrd; our children, John, oldest son, age 27, Natalie, oldest daughter, age 25, Stacey, middle daughter, age 23, Jeremy, middle son, age 21, Isaaca, youngest daughter, age 19, Cody, youngest of all, 17 and my niece, Brittany, age 25. With the exception of John and Cody, all the above mentioned children are in a band called "The Bridges". John eats, breathes and sleeps music and Cody loves and appreciates it. However, a few years ago he asked me if it would be OK if he didn't become a musician. Think he was feeling any pressure?

My husband Bill and I are educated people that came of age in a post-hippie era. I remember that one of my regrets was that I wasn't quite old enough to go to Woodstock (I was twelve) and too young to have friends who actually died in Vietnam. We grew up on the back side of the Jesus Movement and reaped the benefits of civil rights without having to participate in a lunch counter sit-in or know someone who knew someone who was killed in a church bombing. I didn't particularly care about women's rights, because around my family, women had plenty of rights. We never had a “cause” because we were born just a little too late in mid-twentieth century history to claim one for ourselves. All we had was the residue of the passion: the music.

Now, I'm not one to go around adopting causes for myself, but the music that became voice for the 1960's and 70's culture became my soundtrack too. I vicariously lived through that emotional time through the signature music of the day. It was odd, but a certain type of "feeling" came over me while I listened to it. I’m not sure, but it felt like stored up passion waiting to be released: creativity?

What is a creative feeling? It is important to recognize "one" because one day, you may need to sort through your children's emotions or feelings and help them understand patterns of creativity in their lives. I could listen to certain songs and get an overwhelming desire to go and create a lyric, a poem or story. My outlet for this was manifest in what I chose for my college major. At first, I was a drama major, then later an English major with a writing concentration, all venues for creativity.

For years, this creative "feeling" has chased me. I may be sitting on my front porch, seeing the way the cloud shadows and sun bounce around on Coldwater Mountain and hear the opening line for an essay or book. I can be listening to a Celtic tune and all of a sudden, sense the presence of a creative muse in the room with me. It’s like I’m shaking hands in an agreement with something as ancient as God Himself. A few years ago, I felt this at church. The musicians and singers on stage were singing a song that reminded me of an old Celtic hymn. Immediately, that feeling of touching something elusive and at the same time, ageless, gripped me. I asked God what that feeling was. I told him I had experienced it since I was a little girl. I suppose all you have to do is ask, because He told me it was the Spirit of the Ancient of Days, the spirit of God that created the earth. Talk about creativity! If we can plug into that type of creativity, we become muses ourselves.

This is where my story meets my children’s. I decided to become a muse for them. I wanted to get them in touch with the creativity of the Ancient of Days. I wanted to teach them to be in awe of that creative “feeling” and to give themselves over to it when it obviously wanted to show out. I felt that if they understood that their passion for expression was as much God’s as their own, it would manifest itself beautifully.

I’ll tell you how we started the learning process next time I blog. I’ll try to blog more often. Bill says if you don’t blog regularly, you’re a BS blogger. Lord knows I don’t want to be that. Please respond and send me some of your stories about how you inspired your children in their talents. The stories don’t have to be all wonderful. I’m sure some of them are sad and tell of great sacrifices. I hope to compile them into a book about being dream enablers for our children. Please, please respond! Until next time…

Mothers of Musicians

Hi. My name is Donna Byrd and I'm a mother of musicians. I am not ashamed to admit that I am an enabler of dreams and creativity. I took Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's advice and "taught my children well, feeding them on my dreams" and finding out later that they would, indeed, end up feeding me on theirs. I now realize that this is a blissfully co-dependent relationship, each party generating creativity and inspiration to the other one. I don't think that I need counseling for creative co-dependency and enablement. I just want the encouragement of knowing that there are people "out there" just like me.


You see, I know how mothers of musicians think. Did I buy the best key board, drum set or guitar that I could afford? Will their instrument make their talent shine? Should I get them a better music teacher? Have I already sacrificed enough for their potential music career? Is anybody else but me noticing how talented they really are? Is it just me, or are they destined for fame?

Mothers of Musician (MOMS) I know that you're out there! I want to hear from you. What are your success stories, not so successful stories, sacrifices or just, feelings? Let's unite and encourage one another. In my next blog, I'll give you a little more history on my young musicians. Until then, "Teach Your Children".