Beginnings
Life was a hard-scrabble existence in the south where my folks came from. Wasn’t a matter of getting ahead more than simply getting by. You went where the work was and put down roots where you could.
Still, there was more to life than hard times. Long hours and hard work were mainstays, but faith and hope offered religion, neighbors helping neighbors. Sharing dinners and spending time helped to get by and, of course, there was music.
This relentless pursuit of living life with purpose, this higher calling, had a voice with words, with song. Music could tell stories – of hardships, hard roads to travel and hard times. It also opened hearts to love, fellowship, worship and all the things that helped the walking along, the getting by. Music could explain a broken heart while trying to mend it.
Whether it’s a high lonesome sound you’re after or something you can dance to, music lifts you up, takes you down the road, even sends you around the world with the promise of dreams. When you hear a sound that speaks to you, calls you, you are compelled to follow that sound. You must find out what it is saying to you, let it move you.
“I would watch, amazed, as her fingers contorted, lifting up off the banjo’s fretboard and moving to different positions. The fingers on the right hand curling and steady picking out a melody, with the thumb and forefinger outfitted with the appropriate picks to dial the song in. There were many times we would sit together while I watched her play. Those times when I was her only audience play back still so fresh in my memory. She would lean back in her seat and close her eyes in reverie as she played her tune.”
Higher Calling
Turning back a few pages once in a while is a perfectly healthy experience. You can’t know what’s coming next if you aren’t bringing some of the past along with you. There’s no mumbo jumbo to it. Gut instincts will guide you and total surrender will help you plant your feet, but to anticipate the next move you must use what you’ve already gathered.
“In step with music, there’s a higher calling that comes in the form of living life on its own terms, knowing that whatever your lot in life, who you are and what you do are all that matters. That notion won’t be found in a textbook. It will come in the form of chance encounters, happenstance of a different bend, an adventure there’s no way to prepare for. You hear a sound that’s close to your heart and feel compelled to follow it, to find it, become part of it.
Early on, I knew it was up to me to figure things out. There were paths to take, things to see and hear. Everything was a mystery and nothing was a given. The one thing I did know was that the road ahead wouldn’t go very far unless I could understand where it began.
Listening to those around me, learning how to walk with my own steps, wondering what came before me, the stories of those who walked the trails, blazed the trails before me…it all added up to a pilgrimage begun, finding the moments that mattered.