“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!
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