A PASSIONATE AFFAIR · V1B1N Tribe 🌸🧜‍♀️🍉🦋🔆🕺💕

A PASSIONATE AFFAIR

by Zadok Lamar

Published: August 04, 2007 on web

(originally written late Oct, 1995)

We were introduced in late '62. The rhythmic stirring of a beating heart was the first intimation of the joy I would soon know. The stinging slap on my cheek was the catalyst that forced my self-expression. I grimaced; I cried. And this cry began my affair with sound.

I emerged from my mother's sanctuary and was born. Although neither parent was a musician, both had a vast and varied appreciation of music. The intercom system in our house had a speaker in each room and the sounds of the radio permeated every space. If singing to the airwaves bored me, I took out the Lincoln Logs can, dumped all contents on the floor and proceeded to beat out a rhythm on the tin bottom. In a quest for fidelity, my Uncle Mac provided me with one of his numerous snare drums. He had been a popular bandleader in the 1940s, but thought he should get a "real" job in Animal Nutrition. I believe he lived vicariously through my pursuit of sound.

Home life was full of audible extremes. Grandmother lived with us and was rapidly going deaf. Father had a stroke before I was born and the only clear words he spoke were the loud ones. Mother worked as a Bell operator. She was graded daily on her tone and volume levels which made her rather soft, mild and metered in comparison. When you put us all in one place competing to be heard, friends hearing us over the phone would liken us to "The Loud Family" (a popular skit on Saturday Night Live in the 1970s).

This love affair blossomed fully when I attended a special middle school. Instrumental lessons were part of the curriculum. I plunged right into all of them. I took chorus, organ, drum, recorder, guitar, bugle and trumpet in band. But, to my ultimate disappointment, I soon realized that, although I reveled in the power of the notes being struck, I trembled at the prospect of performing before an audience. I felt too close to the music. It was as if this practiced, technical set of movements could somehow render my emotional walls transparent.

Reality for me has always been punctuated with sound. An event held no emotional context without an accompanying sound. When my live-in grandmother (who was my closest friend and mentor) died when I was 13, I heard nothing. There was no death rattle; rigor mortis makes no creaks. Even though I found her body first, I was not horrified. I didn't rush to tell my parents; I just sat next to her bed waiting for a sound that never came. I felt calm and detached as if intellectually I knew she was 82 and had lived a long and productive time. My parents sobbed immediately and I felt callous for not being able to do so. I greeted all the relatives at the funeral with complete ease. We sat down when services began and the organist started to play. The first chord she touched shot a dagger piercing through my soul. This was really happening and I started to bawl in a crying jag that would last several days.

For those who love music, the obsession to hear or play it can resemble a sort of religious fervor. It can induce trance states. As for me, I'd rather hear music than eat. When I find the right musical tapestry, it feels as though my spirit has been elevated, recharged and satiated. The world of sound becomes my Bible and I am filled with the Holy Note. As with all hungry believers, I crave the counsel of my priests, the musicians who suffer in poverty for their faith. I seek the composers and conductors with their grander visions, for they are the bishops and archbishops in this hierarchy. Patiently, I wait for the appearance of a saint or the second coming of a Messiah, the arrival of a Mozart, someone for whom music is the essence of all emotional communication and one who speaks it fluently.

I am fascinated by the psychological effects of sound, and particularly, music. It is a powerful thing to be able to change the tone of a large group of people simply by the music you select. I have tinkered with every patch cable known to Radio Shack. I have trembled in the experience of spiritual goose bumps, that moment when you know you just got the "perfect" recorded take of a song. Orgasm is hearing musicians animatedly talking to each other in their native instrument. True catharsis comes in that rare performance that brings tears of joy and/or happiness.

We are presently aware of the results of music therapy on autistic children, of our ability to see the gender of an unborn child through ultrasound, and of an opera singer who can break a crystal wine glass with the sheer force of her voice alone. I perceive sound as another set of waveforms rippling outward to eternity, much like light and the Theory of the Big Bang. We have merely begun to tap its powers or see its effects. In the future, say a hundred years or more, I believe musicians will have medical degrees, as will doctors have music degrees. Getting a medical check-up will be like a tune-up for your car, but it will be non-invasive and many of the frequencies will exist within the human hearing spectrum. It is my dream to bring this possibility one step closer than we are now. I hope to leave this life as passionately and audibly as I began it.

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