It’s a very serious problem in our home, and I suspect it’s a problem in other houses around America: Song-lyric fascists are ruining our fun. Because here’s the thing: Song lyrics are constructs. They are guidelines. Song lyrics, like the Constitution, are living, breathing words. We bend them to our will. They are not meant to be taken literally. In fact, song lyrics are often indecipherable junk written to accompany the melody and rarely to stand on their own. They are not poems. We do not derive meaning from their words; we experience the music. The mood. The feeling. The joy or the sadness. The lyrics glue the music together, but they are not fixed.

Continue Reading...

I am/was a bass player. I played in the same band as my spouse. Now I am separated and chronically ill.

Playing music was always, growing up, the most important and only safe part of me.  Music was my sanctuary, my heart, my sanity and my reality.

I saved my pennies and nickels (literally) and bought my first guitar at age 11. Two years later my guitar teacher, who I thought actually cared about me, was in fact emotionally sexually abusive and having been caught with his pants down in front of small children was institutionalized and I was betrayed. I lost my guitar somewhere along the way.

Kids happened, marriages happened then a new boyfriend left his guitar at my house. It was in its case, propped open against the hutch in the dining room. I was vacuuming. I leaned over and flipped the case closed. Time stopped and spun backwards. The smell of rich wood and metal and gray fuzzy case lining floated up and socked me hard with the memory of the guitar I worked so hard for and embraced through the insanity and fear that was my childhood.

Continue Reading...

h/t Vulture

Continue Reading...