Music is as necessary to me as air. Not a day goes by that is not made better by soothing tones, moving rhythms or lyrics that touch my heart. My tastes are quite eclectic and include classical, pop, all shades of rock including heavy metal, jazz, R&B, musical theater and rap/hip hop. There are myriad songs or pieces that have touched me in some way, that remind me of a particular time or place, a person, a relationship, a feeling. But it is actually an entire genre rather than a song that has stayed with me throughout my life, from my earliest musical recollections till today: country music.

When I was five, my parents divorced. My mom and I moved to a small apartment. Every morning, as we prepared for school and work, she used to turn on the radio in the kitchen and the station was always country music. I fell in love without being aware, especially with the storytelling. Sometimes the songs made me laugh, more often, they made me cry. Music --all music but particularly a good country song -- has had the ability to move me to tears (both happy and sad) since those early days of my childhood.

The first country song I remember crying to every time I heard it on the radio was Spring by Tanya Tucker. The lines that always made me burst into tears were: Momma don't go away/And leave me all alone/Momma said to the welfare lady/Find my child a good home. (There is a happy ending. Although Momma dies and Spring grows up in an orphanage, she finds love and gets married to her best friend from the orphanage in the end. :-)

One song that made my mother laugh hysterically when she heard me sing it was Lucille by Kenny Rogers. The chorus is You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille/With four hungry children and a crop in the field..." I, however, thought he was saying "400 children and a crop in the field." My mother cried she laughed so hard before saying, "400 children? I guess she did leave. I'm surprised she's not dead."

I could be heard singing other country songs throughout the 70s and 80s, along with all the other types of music that touched my soul in those years. In the 90s, life got crazy as I married, lost my daddy, had a child, bought a house, a car and started my career in education. It wasn't until 2001, when I was driving on 95 North heading home from a conference in DC that I found a country station for the first time in years. A new Alan Jackson song came on. I had to pull over because I couldn't stop weeping.The first lines were:

Where were you when the world stopped turnin'/that September day?

Were you in the yard with your wife and children/or workin' on some stage in L.A.?

Did you stand there in shock at the sight of that black smoke/risin' against that blue sky?

Did you shout out in anger, in fear for your neighbor/or did you just sit down and cry?

I was in a classroom, teaching that day - where I remained, consoling my students as fear and grief overwhelmed them, until the bell rang at 3:00 pm and I could finally speed to my son’s school and hug him close and take him home. My heart broke when he said so many parents had come to get their children early and he had wondered why I hadn't come sooner.

I cry every single time I hear that song.

After finding that station, I renewed my love of country. Until they took it off the air last fall, 94.7 NY Country was my go to radio station. Now, I'm all classical or "music from the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s" when I have the radio on. But, more often than not, I put on one of my Playlists loaded with country music.

Over the last two decades, I have amassed a treasure trove of country songs that have made me feel not only joy or sadness, but also, simply, connected. We, humanity, share a lot of the same basic life experiences - love; lust; longing; anger; sadness; loss; loneliness; betrayal; family - the good, the bad and the ugly; work woes; illness; death. Country music has it all.

I guess I love country because so often it says exactly what I feel or felt or need to hear...or simply tells a great story that feels familiar or fun. I have it on in the bathroom as I shower, the kitchen as I cook, the living room as I clean, the car as I drive. I take it with me everywhere - it is a part of who I am.

your dad must have been so sick of that song. of every time we got in the car and made him play it. peach juice dripping from our chins and arms waving around in the back seat.

we knew every word and every movement. we sang it when we couldn't hear it and it made us so happy.

i hope your dad's resting well. i hope one day you can eat another peach. i wonder if i'll always have to ward off tears when i hear our song.

i love so many things. music has this unnerving quality that you can just be stuck, seemly eternally on a loop. it could be just a few bars worth of notes, just a few seconds, but something about it just drive you insane. its like your brain got faced with this unsolvable roddle, and tries agaon and again to figure it out...which it can't...

i grew up listening mostly to jazz, but for some reason at some point when i was in my early tweens i got a double album; Glenn Gould plays the English suites.

its not Bach's most complex composition and not Gould most profound recording. but hearing this album changed how i hear classical music from a casual interest/nice-ish thing to total insanity.

i took particular interest in the A minor suite. i got the music sheetbfor the whole oppus, but this baby drove crazy. the prelude is my first seroous attempt at fugal structure and its a hard, merciless bitch a thing. (if the last time you did any classical music was age 10..)

but i got it done. then ti fnal gigue, is even more crazy. which is why i intentionally played it at a crawl. (if Gould can play with the tempo than so can i HaHaHa!!!!!!!).

i haven't stopped playing thos ever since. i just remember it all, without any need to think. i play it in school, in abandoned musc rooms, i played kt back home when my father died.

i even play it at home (though my girl doesn't lime Bach so much..)

someday i won't ay it any more.

but it will not be by choice!!

“Headed down south to the land of the pines,

I’m thumbin’ my way into North Caroline.

Starin’ up the road and pray to God I see headlights.”

My voice was hushed, almost a whisper, as I sang this song in the darkness. It was the only song I could think of to sing as my newborn baby boy laid in my arms. My son looked up at me with wide eyes, that I could make out by the light of the moon filtering through the window, soft and gentle as a caress.

This was the third insomniac night in a row, just home from the hospital. I felt afraid to go to bed. Sleep deprivation scrambled my thoughts and plagued me with a strange anxiety. For whatever the reason may have been, the lyrics calmed my nerves, grounding me to this precious, quiet moment.

“I made it down the coast in seventeen hours,

Pickin’ me a bouquet of dogwood flowers

And I’m a-hopin’ for Raleigh, I can see my baby tonight.”

This was the only thing I could focus on. Only this moment. I battled the questions in my hyperactive brain. What am I supposed to do now? How can I care for him for the rest of my life? What if I mess up? What if he never sleeps? As the thoughts jabbed through my head, I took a calming breath and continued with my song.

“So, rock me, mama, like a wagon wheel,

Rock me, mama, any way you feel.

Hey… mama, rock me.

Rock me, mama, like the wind in the rain,

Rock me, mama, like a southbound train.

Hey… mama, rock me.”

Ever so slowly, heavy eyelids drooped over sleepy eyes of my son, and I felt mine following suit. Gently, I laid my baby beside me as I sleepily sang the rest of the song, forgetting half the words. Sleep encompassed the both of us, as I wrapped my arms around the now sleeping boy. The release of slumber was so sweet, tears slid down my cheeks as my brain phased into dreams. Everything was going to be alright. There would be endless days ahead of music to share with my sweet child.

It was a scene, at least I like to think, straight out of a movie. A horsegirl movie, the kind that makes you cry like every good movie about animals does. But there were no happy tears that day, because I was saying goodbye to a friend. To a horse that a year before stood in the field, ignored and unwated because people broke it and no one wanted to take on the responsibility of fixing it. I did.

I found the owner and told her that all I want is a horse I could treat like my own without having to pay for it and she accepted. That was my moment, my thing that finally made me the responsible adult I was supposed to be.

And damn it, I did it. I took that horse and I fixed it. I loved that crazy red mare and she loved me back. We spent the whole summer together and then the autumn and then the winter. Most of the winter anyway. We never got a spring.

The owner decided to sell her and I found out the day the buyers came to look at her. A nice family with two little girls who told me that I could come visit any time I wanted. Then the mom told the little girls, "She'll be perfect for you. You can teach her anything, she'll be yours."

I wanted to tell them, "But she's mine." But she wasn't. In the face of someone offering money for her, I had no claim to the horse that I taught how to ride and run and love people again. That mare was who she was because of me and in the blink of an eye, I was losing her.

I couldn't do it. I called my mom to come pick me up, grabbed my jacket and walked away. I was strong. I held in it. Then my mom asked, "What's wrong?" and I broke down. I climbed into the shotgun seat crying my eyes out and as my mom started the car to take me home, to take me away from the horse I loved but would never see again, the radio started playing, "Pain! You break me down and build me up, believer!"

Six months later, I was back in it and this time, I wasn't taking any chances. I bought my own horse, so no one could rip it ouf of my hands this time, a young one, a strong one, happy and full of life. I loaded her up and got into the car to drive her home. The radio turned on and as we turned onto the main street, I noticed the same old song playing. "Pain! Oh, let the bullets fly, oh, let them rain!"

It was a sign, right? That damned song that I haven't heard since I broke down in my mom's car was playing again, surely that meant something. This was my poetic happy ending and nothing could hurt me now.

But my new mare was sick a lot. I thought, oh, that's nothing. This is typical for her breed, we just need to be more careful with her food and buy more supplements.

She was crazy and wild. She loved to do her own thing, but everything I tried to teach her, she picked up so quickly. She had the steadiest gallop I've ever seen. She'd trip on air when she walked, but let her run and I knew she would never fall.

She made it ten months. I could buy all the supplements in the world and it wouldn't have helped. The vet was there the whole afternoon. I begged her. I told her, "You're so young, you have more than this in you, I know you do." She didn't. She wanted to, she wanted to so badly, but she didn't. I was going to take her to the forest on the weekend.

When my mom took me home that evening, I didn't turn on the radio. My happy ending shattered in my hands in the span of one afternoon, I didn't want to know. But to this day I wonder, if I turned on the radio, would I have heard the same tune?

Today marks exactly one year since I bought her. A little over two months since I lost her. I haven't listened to the song since but sometimes, when I'm crying and breaking down, all I can think of are the lyrics. My life, my love, my drive, it came from pain.

There's a man I met once.

His voice was gritty and his skin was dark; tanned darker by a southern sun and an eastward wind.

His words were wise with experience but his soul dripped sadness.

In a verse, he could tell you where you were coming from. Though his origins were unknown.

His voice had a bit of Georgia...or was that Alabama? No, definitely Arkansas. No that's wrong, too.

His origins were unknown.

He came,

from out of the blues.

In 3 chords, he could tell you your future. In 3 more, he'd make sense of your past.

In the turnaround he'd reveal your greatest triumph. Then liken it to a time of vulnerability; that time you were most indefensibly exposed.

I was leveled to nothing, then he brought me back up. The chorus showed me his nascence and pulled me in with him.

He left me there to crawl out on my own.

to crawl out.

Out of the Blues.

Freshly broken people,

standing one whole person apart

seeing each other out of peripheral

someone on stage sings

hearts iron-guarded

minds left to wander

freshly broken people,

they can only think of each other

what could have been

what can never be

freshly broken people,

a song stirring their souls

a line drawing between them

the lyrics poking old wounds

freshly broken people,

hated how fate could be so cruel

The day was dark

Thick grey clouds hover around

Sometimes sun would peek in,

Sometimes you would see some slight color to this place.

Sometimes you would hear the sound of people striving.

It was a dark night,

The darkest night I had seen.

The clouds was too thick for the moon nor the stars to shine through.

The shadows were greater than the candles could ever reach.

The cold was slipping through the gaps of our wooden walls,

The howling winds sounded like countless wailing souls.

Our roof was almost torned off like countless neighbor's roof had, banging all over the place as it made the winds sound more of a suffering ghost parade slowly passing by.

My young imaginative mind was not very helpful at that time.

The devastation passed like nothing happened, except it left a trail that took months to fix.

It left scars that couldn't properly heal after time passed.

The old model of the cellphone my father owned was close to draining.

Only the two songs that are saved on the phone were playing nonstop, which could only be heared echoing throughout the night.

The same song would be played by the light of dawn while the roosters tries to break the deafening silence in our neighborhood.

After a few days,

The roof we had was crooked,

The streetlight across our neighbor toppled over, blocking the path.

The province lacked electricity for a month and over.

Mom was away for weeks.

Dad, my brother, and I was only there trying to live through the cold silence.

While the songs were there accompanying the stillness.

I was 7 years old.

Few years later, a random song was played by one of my neighbor through their speakers.

It sounded so familiar, I was bewildered by how much of a song could make me chocke my breath and force a bit of tears on me.

Then the memory came back like giant waves crushing me, drowning me, and doing it all over again.

...

For some unknown reason, countless typhoons were part of my core memory.

https://youtu.be/6thmPrTxBtI

https://youtu.be/OMD8hBsA-RI