A couple of days ago, I got a letter in the mail from a very good friend of mine who lives in Sweden. You all remember Sweden, don't you? The country that did not lockdown their citizens, and apparently did very well health-wise compared against, say, California, which still isn't yet fully "open", but is quite close. He tells me that the truth is that they did have lockdowns, but they weren't mandatory. He explained that they trust their government (I am so glad that they can!) and the goverment trusts them. So they left it up to the citizens to handle the situation however they felt best. In a way that was how it was here in the United States at the very beginning...American citizens who had travelled to China and had come back to the United States, if they had any symptoms, went to a hospital for two weeks. I am not completely sure, but I think throughout the United State's history, when immigrants arrived after the long ocean voyage, they had a two-week lockdown in some approved facility, such as Ellis Island if they had arrived in New York. That was to protect Americans from various potential diseases brought in from elsewhere. Two weeks. I always think of two weeks as the standard. How did it ever become more than two weeks for citizens already living here? How about more than a YEAR for people living where I do, in California?
Well, my friend said in his letter than now the county pandemic doctor in Vesterbotten, the the county where he lives in northern Sweden, proclaimed a mandatory lockdown on all the people living in his county. Really? Now? After all that "trust" or last year? He and his wife had hoped to go up to their new cabin in Lapland that they recently bought. This is beyond the Arctic Circle. They wanted to take in some good cross-country skiing, but now they can't leave their own county. Lapland is even farther north than where they live. Lapland is not, say, Stockholm, packed with people. Does the doctor in Vesterbotten worry that they will spread to or from the raindeer? Hey, Santa Clause delivered all those presents last Christmas! The raindeer are healty; I know, because I got my presents, too. I didn't see any alarming spike last December!
So now my friend and his wife are stuck at home; no much looking-forward to cross-country fun in the snow for them! I thought that was really a bummer for them, but then I got busy with some things I needed to do at home, and turned on some music that could be heard all around the house, with wireless Rocketfish cordless transmission sending the music to the living room, the kitchen, the bedroom, and my office. So wherever I am in the house, special music can catch me and sometimes stop me in my tracks.
I had chosen Dave Grucin's album of Henry Mancini music, called "Two For The Road". You might have remembered from my music of last year that Henry Mancini is my all time number one favorite music maker. Well, Dave Grucin is one of my favorite arrangers (and boy do I keep aware of arrangers!), so this album is a wonderful combination of the work of musical geniuses.
In the paragraph above, I said that the music can sometimes stop me in my tracks...and that can be even if I have been stopped in my tracks by that song before! I think some songs will forever stop me in my tracks every time I hear them.
Then the song "Soldier In The Rain" came on, with its two double notes at the very beginning, dun dun, dun dun (for some reason those grab me every time, meaning that the music says "hey, listen, something very deep and special is about to be played"). I was stopped, and quickly found a place where I could sit down and listen to the song deeply. "Soldier In The Rain", and especially this version, requires that you sit down and listen, partially in homage to its consideration of soldiers, but because a song that beautiful and heartfelt requires rapt attention. I will even let a tear or two call, why not, the song is just so precious, and Diana Krall's singing is just so special. Her voice goes straight into my heart.
Listening to this, I remembered that in my friend's letter, he happened to reference a song in my last year's LockDown Musical Interludes. I was reminded that he had really liked that series of songs. For the past several months, I had been especially emotionally involved with several songs that I seemed to want to listen to almost every day. There was something just so touching and meaningful to me that I couldn't stop wanting to hear them. I decided that the time had come again to put forth another collection of special songs, this time a slightly different theme. At first I thought of them as being sad songs, which happen to have a special meaning to me, but "sad" is off-putting and the point of those songs is not sadness, but love...very deep love. And not a love for, say, one person, even though there could be that, too, but what I feel in most of them is a love for virtually everybody. After a year of lockdowns and mask wearing and being separated from so many people that we all had cared out, maybe even lost people permanently, aren't we really sad, actually, and there is no shame in it. But that sadness is because of your love.
I am a very extroverted person, and I feel for more than a year now that I have been imprisoned in solitary confinement in a supermax prison. Yeah, I can talk with people on the phone, correspond on the Internet, go shopping at the grocery store and maybe exchance a few quips with somebody whose upper half of their face peers at me with beady eyes, the lower half is invisible. I may be smiling at people, but how do they know it?
I care about people and I like caring about them. I bet you are the same. I think you feel like I do, that you can BUST out into the world and let FLOW that love that has been generating among your inner thoughts. These songs are like a magic carpet that you can ride into your deams, and as you ride you are each moment manifesting the elements of what you are dreaming of. The time will come when it really will exist, made by the strength of your heart.
1. Song name: Soldier In The Rain
Music Composer: Henry Mancini
Lyricists: Alan and Marylin Bergman
Singer: Diana Krall
Link to the song on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utDJYlnYBQ4
Liking Henry Mancini as I do, I have been obtaining every movie that contained Henry's music. The movie of Soldier In The Rain was different than I had expectedit would be...its about two men in the army, one older man who seemed to know all the angles, played by Jackie Gleason, and a younger soldier who was enthusiastic but naive, played by Steve McQueen in a very different role for him. The older soldier was a mentor for the younger one. They had a very supportive friendship, which is sometimes hard for men to establish. It seems that more often there is competition, instead.
I was surprised that the song was not a "theme song" that ran throughout the movie; in fact, I would have to watch the movie again to see is there even was any other music at all. Throughout the whole movie, I kept waiting for that song to finally appear and when it did, I didn't think it was highlighting a particular event that seemed crucial or hugely meaningful. But once the film was over, my realization was that the whole movie was about two men who loved each other, and by that I don't mean sexually, but a genuine love between people the way things SHOULD be. How amazing to see that and how important it is and how many men have nothing like that at all. They may have a powerful marriage, but endure a loneliness and pine for a connection with others of their own gender. So really the song could have been placed anywhere in the movie, its meaning was everywhere and you feel that as the movie comes to an end. Your may feel that there is a place in your heart that aches, that is like a bowl within you made to contain an expanse of love.
