Music Envy

Little did I know when I went to a recent poetry reading/lecture by poet, playwright, literary critic and librettist George Elliot Clarke that I would end up thinking about my relationship with rock and roll. The discussion was supposed to be about poetry and political engagement, not music. But it turns out that he and I have a lot in common, including being born in the same year and being from Nova Scotia. And, like me, Clarke has never gotten over an early desire to be a musician. In fact, he has never really left that desire behind, working as he has on operas involving both classical music and jazz.

Back in high school I tried guitar, but my instructor didn’t have any guitars for the left-handed and said I could just adapt, which I did - for two lessons. My mother, like many parents, tried to encourage my interest in music and bought me a harmonica and a bongo. But after a few tentative stabs at these objects, I soon realized that they weren’t going to play themselves. Music did not come naturally to me. And my private in-car singing performances on the way to my grandparents’ place were soon postponed indefinitely while my mother took pills to stop the ringing.

And so began a long life of music envy. I, like Clarke, wrote lyrics before I wrote poems. His output was prodigious during his junior high years. I managed two hundred lyrics in one year and then, after a failed attempt to form a band with some equally unskilled friends, I went back to writing short stories. Let’s face it – growing up in those days or even now, music was/is God. You are judged by the bands you listen to. You follow (sometimes literally) the local bands that are struggling to get noticed and if one of those groups get a record deal you can proudly say you were there before they sold out.

But more importantly, the guy with the guitar gets the chicks. It’s a cliché, but I’ve watched it happen. A few people gathered together in a university residence lounge - one guy picks up his guitar and you notice that the cute girl who never shuts up has gone all quiet and the guitar man’s roommate later returns to the room to find a bra hanging on the doorknob. (No one said musicians were subtle.) Meanwhile, a former friend of mine once introduced a tableful of us to a couple of aerobics instructors who had approached us at a bar. There was a lawyer, a medical technician, a teacher and, of course, my friend saved me for last – “And this is Jacques. He’s a poet.” The girls went back to watching the band. If things had gone differently that night I might be the healthiest guy my age, although I might have a compulsion to count to four all the time.

I was attracted to poetry only gradually. Sure, I was aware many of the best poems had an element of musicality, but at least I didn’t have to spend a fortune trying out pens or types of paper – unlike the world of music where you have to make a bit more of an investment. I might end up being a bad poet, but I could be bad with very little overhead.

Another thing that Clarke pointed out during his talk, though, was that the intense interest in music starts to fade after one’s early 20’s. True enough. My knowledge of current music is more than spotty. The experience of listening has changed somewhat as well, although listening to an iPod-shuffled mix isn’t all that different from throwing a stack of seven 45’s (you know – vinyl) on my turntable and playing a string of very different artists. Sure, bands like No Doubt, Evanescence, Good Charlotte, White Stripes, The Hives, and Jet come along to get me interested in what’s happening now – or, more like a few years ago. And I can still hear a song like “Fallin’” by Alicia Keys and recognize that it is in the ranks of the all-time best torch songs. But I envy the passion that younger listeners have for their music. And I’m sorry I missed out on raves and got stuck with disco.

But, then, age gives me some historical musical perspective. I now know that one of the few disco songs I liked – Amii Stewart’s “Knock On Wood” – was a cover of an Eddie Floyd song. Not unlike the minstrels of medieval Europe, modern songsters cover and re-mix and re-vamp. So Janet Jackson uses a snatch of America’s “Ventura Highway” and Madonna grabs a snippet of Abba’s “Gimmee! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” – some of us know where those pieces have come from and it’s a little something to make us feel smug, and to remind us that there’s nothing new under the sun.

I’ve learned to accept my place as an amateur music historian and my contribution is my personal knowledge of the period from the c.1970-c.1986. I’ve also learned to accept that words have always come more easily to me than notes. Poetry has been there all this time for me – the Betty to music’s Veronica. Not too shabby. And words will still be in my head long after I’ve blasted my ears to hanging shreds of protoplasm listening to Led Zep’s “Rock and Roll” on the headphones. Genres of music have already changed a dozen or more times since my taste was relevant and will continue to change, leaving the songs I hum very much out of style. But some the best of the poems I knew back then are still zip-lock fresh (same with some of the songs, as it turns out). Poems, for whatever reason, seem to age more slowly. Maybe the muse is some kind of cosmic aerobics instructor who still has me counting, “One, two, three, four…”