Setting The Intention: Part Four

A call to an old friend brought back a slew of memories and thoughts about the power of music to enhance the ways we engage in and perceive the world.

This past Friday, I was driving home and took a chance and called one of my oldest friends. Joann was the first adult friend I made completely on my own when I was twelve years old or so. She was the music buyer at our local Christian bookstore and one of the first people I developed a friendship without the aid of a church or school connection. Music was the thing between us.

I considered myself to be knowledgable about the music I was allowed to listen to, but Joann stretched my tastes. “Have you heard Margaret Becker?” was one of her first questions to me. She urged me to delve into Margaret’s work…and I did. We bonded over the rich lyricism and vulnerability of her 1988 release The Reckoning and the incredible artistic growth that her 1989 album Immigrant’s Daughter revealed. (Gird yourself for this amazing clip of Margaret below circa 1992.)

Sometime in 1989, I found the courage to invite Joann to hear me sing at my grandparent’s church for a Christmas program. Inviting her made me nervous. My family’s church was full of eccentric characters, with my grandparents being the ringleaders. Their beliefs were suffocatingly restrictive and their desire to control was insatiable. This was during their Satanic panic era which meant that anything from a triangle on an album cover to an overly-distorted guitar was an indicator of some kind of demonic infiltration.

I was nervous that she would lump me in with them, see me as somehow like them, despite my best efforts to be something entirely different. That Sunday, I sang Margaret Becker’s version of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” because Joann had turned me on to it (and it remains my favorite version) and I did my thirteen-year-old best to do it justice.

Backstage at a Margaret Becker performance circa 1991 (L to R: myself, Margaret Becker, Joann)

When I went to see her at the bookstore a few days later, she told me that I was incredibly talented and that my family was absolutely nuts. She wanted me to know that she could see that and that I could talk to her about it whenever I needed to. I don’t know what made this twenty-seven year old woman see me so entirely, but I will always be grateful that she did. It changed my life. Having someone that I could talk to as honestly as I knew how to at the time saved me from either succumbing to their madness or rebelling in ways that might have been destructive to me.

We started getting together to work on music together. Joann played the acoustic guitar and she began teaching me chords and helping me set some of my lyrics to music. She was the first person I ever shared one of my poems with and she helped me craft them into songs. She also introduced me to gems like Joni Mitchell’s “Circle Game,” which was my gateway to all things Joni.

When I made my way into the Holiness church at 14, she was a huge support as my family and I began to separate. She helped me get my first part-time job at the bookstore with her. We spent almost every Sunday evening together, driving along the long stretch of beach on Gulf Blvd. and stopping at Pass-a-Grille Beach to walk, talk and reflect. We read books that the other suggested, listened to music we might not have had we not known each other, and belly laughed unapologetically. She introduced me to used record stores and the art of crate digging—something, much to my spouse’s chagrin—I still do as often as I can.

I still remember where we were the first time I played her Cyndi Lauper’s “Sally’s Pigeons,” a song about a friend lost to a back alley abortion in the pre-passage of Roe Vs. Wade days, and watched tears stream down her face. When it came time for me to leave Florida, my last dinner out was with her, my treasured mentor and friend.

Since I left St. Petersburg in 2001, we’ve stayed in touch through email, but we spoke on the phone for the first time since then last fall. Right after we spoke, life amped up and time took over. There were projects to finish, a new job to train for, and a book begging to be finished. But now, as the dust has settled and things are (sort of) calming down, I reached out on Friday and was delighted when she answered the phone.

Our two-hour call made me feel as if no time had gone by. We’re both still ourselves, even though so many of the details of our lives are different. We found ourselves back in the songs that marked us some thirty-plus years ago. We laughed at how frequently she played Randy Stonehill’s brilliant album Wonderama in the bookstore and I shared about seeing Randy perform “Rachel Delevoryas,” a song about a classmate from his high school years who never quite fit in, from that album earlier this year.

I’ve been reflecting on our call all week, grateful that music has been this magical thing in my life that has brought amazing friends and chosen family into my world. Joann is one of several teachers who helped set me on the artist’s path, urging me to listen to music deeply and empathically, utilizing what I hear, see and sense to inform the ways I exist and engage with people. As you read the essays at God’s Music Is My Life, I hope that my writings call you to a similar heart space, to listen to the music with intention and allow it to enhance, improve, and, yes, change the ways we are in the world together.

PS: In a Margaret Becker-related note, she recently completed production on the debut album of the brilliant Americana artist, Joy Clark. You can hear the first single, also co-written by Margaret, below! Follow Joy, here.

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