Comfort Music

**I suppose announcing that I wanted to try and blog a little each day served as the kiss of death! Maybe that won't work after all. :)**

I drive quite a bit for work, which means I spend a good amount of time listening to podcasts or music. Yesterday I drove to Lafayette, which takes me about 75 minutes one way. Normally I favor the podcasts, my favorite shows consisting of This American Life, The Moth, The Satellite Sisters and Manic Mommies. Unfortunately, by the time I finished getting both lunches packed and both kids ready for school, I had failed to sync the most recent episodes.

This left me thumbing through my playlists for something I hadn’t heard for awhile. We all have different versions of comfort music, the songs or albums that follow you throughout your life. They never grow old or tiresome. My mother’s comfort music was Joan Baez. I remember listening to Joan’s voice fill our Minnesota kitchen with her melancholy tunes. My mom and I often sang along to various songs together, but the only song I really liked of Mrs. Baez’s was Diamonds and Rust.

I'll be damned
Here comes your ghost again
But that's not unusual
It's just that the moon is full
And you happened to call
And here I sit
Hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I'd known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall
As I remember your eyes
Were bluer than robin's eggs
My poetry was lousy you said
Where are you calling from?
A booth in the midwest
Ten years ago
I bought you some cufflinks
You brought me something
We both know what memories can bring
They bring diamonds and rust

For as long as I can remember I’ve favored sad songs. I loved this song for the visual contrasts between the sight diamonds and rust. I imagined dazzling jewels perched upon massive mound of junk yard scrap metal. Until looking up these lyrics just a moment ago, I had no idea it was about a long lost lover. In a time where I knew nothing of romantic love, the song pulled me into a wave of emotion, and created a stunning visual against my closed eyelids. Naturally, I loved it.

Each night my mom sat on the edge of my bed in my purple wall papered room, stroked my forehead and sang me , Yes We Have No Bananas, All the Pretty Horses and The Rocking Chair Song, as part of my bedtime routine.

“Sing the one about the horses, “ I begged my mom each night. I meant, All the Pretty Horses.
“But Kate honey, it makes you cry every time.”
“I know, but I like that song. Please.”
Softly, she’d begin the horribly sad lullaby,
“Hush-a-bye, don't you cry,
Go to sleepy little baby.
When you wake, you shall have,
All the pretty little horsies.

Blacks and bays, dapples and greys,
Go to sleep you little baby,
Hush-a-bye, don't you cry,
Go to sleepy little baby.
Way down yonder, down in the meadow,
There's a poor little baby crying mama.
The birds and the butterflies flutter round its eyes,
The poor little baby crying mama.”


Hearing my mom sing about that baby crying mama produced a stream of tears every night. I imagined a Moses-like baby, left alone in a basket in the middle of a field, only the birds and butterflies paying any attention to the tiny baby’s sorrowful cries. I imagined the birds shooting questionable glances at the butterflies and the butterflies flapping their wings in agitation, as if to say, “Well, what do you expect us to do about this kid?”

Why would anyone leave a baby alone like that? My heart bled for the fictional baby. I looked up into the face of my own mother, her lotioned hand stroking my forehead as relief filled and relaxed my body. My mother never left me in a basket in a field. Boy, was I lucky. Now I could get a good night’s sleep, the fathom nameless fears put to rest for another night.

I eventually found The Indigo Girls, the thick down blanket of my own comfort music, on my ipod. I swirled my thumb over the slick disk to find the song I wanted, “Mystery”. I remembered that my sister’s high school boyfriend introduced her, then me, to the Indigo Girls.

Cruising along 65 south, I rolled down the windows. Not caring if the truckers I passed looked down on me and chuckled to themselves, I belted out the chorus,
“I could go crazy on a night like tonight, where summer’s beginning to give up her fight. And every thought is a possibility, where voices are heard, but nothing is seen. Why do you spend this time with me, may be an equal mystery.”

Each time I come back to their music, I vow to learn to play the guitar once and for all. If only I could play one of their songs for myself, to strum my own fingers across the taunt strings and sing, no matter how off key, one of my favorite lines,
“You like the taste of danger, it shines like sugar, on your lips. You like to stand in the line of fire, just to show you could shot straight from your hip. There must be a thousand things you would die for, I can hardly think of two.”

What is your comfort music?