Nineteen-fifty-something. I was very young and sitting in the back seat of the car. The family was taking a trip up into the mountains for a picnic. No music. Radio turned off. Dad was driving and I think he wanted to visit with my mother. My sister was in the front seat because she was just a baby… she needed our mother’s care. My brother was seated by one window, and I was seated by the other window, in the back seat of our family car. We were all happy and excited to be going to the mountains. We had fried chicken and potato salad… my brother was really looking forward to the food. He kept talking about the chicken and looking out the window. I was too short to see out the window and there was no music. I really would have loved to have had the car radio on. Nothing was distracting me. I had nothing to make the ride interesting. Even the car windows were closed. There was no breeze. No fresh air.
We traveled away from the plains of South East Colorado and into the mountains. The car swayed and leaned with the rolling of the road from one side to the other, and then again this side to that. I tried to look out the window again, and get a fix on something outside the car. All I could see was the side of a mountain closing in and getting taller and taller. More swaying. No uncontrolled lulling. More talk of fried chicken. Still no music. No breeze, no fresh air.
My body began to rumble deep inside me. I started breathing funny. At last my mother looked back at me. “Oh, Carroll… We need to stop the car. Carolyn’s sick.” And yes, I was. Very carsick! My dad stopped the car and out I jumped and immediately lost my breakfast there on the side of the road.
In any given moment of misfortune, we will be moved to be true to ourselves… who we really are. No mask. No Saturday face. My parents were very sympathetic. My sister was crying in the front seat. (She cried a lot as a baby. I wondered, that day, if she felt a little carsick too. But she never threw up from riding in the car like her big sister did.) My brother? He was very sorry I was sick but he couldn’t wait for me to be done with it so we could get going, find a picnic table and eat that fried chicken!
Ten years later and the five of us were still going on picnics: In the Summer or Fall, the mountains with fried chicken. In the Winter or the Spring we went to the Cedars to grill hamburgers over and open flame. And in between all of that, we went to the sand dunes to eat sand riddled sandwiches.
On one of those warm Spring weekends we were heading back into the mountains. Not much had changed… My dad still wanted to visit with my mother, but my sister was now older and reading in the car (so, she definitely did not have carsickness). My brother was still talking about the food we would consume. And yes, still sans music.
We hit the rolling hills. The car swayed lightly. Up up up… into the height of the Rockies. Moving this way and that as the road directed the car. I stared out the window and watched the distant view of the trees close in. Higher and higher into the mountains… The tree line disappeared. And with it my control grew faint. I rolled down the window of the car and leaned my head out into the fresh air. It helped. Too late. My stomach rumbled and growled and turned inside my body. Then out of the blue I started to sing. My mother began to sing with me. My father began to sing. My brother sang (adding new and unexpected lyrics based on the food we were soon to eat). At last I felt focus and relief. To this day, music always helps me get passed the rock and roll of carsickness. And so it was that as I continued to mature, music became my constant companion in the car.
January 15th, 2010: I was driving to the Arizona border by myself. Not a fun trip. A work trip. There were no curves in the road to irritate my countenance. Yet I had my music. What could deter me from my appointed round?
Music is many things to its listeners.
*It can say things and communicate when we ourselves can’t find the words.
*It is a soother of souls.
*It is an answer to an angry soul that won’t be heard by others.
*It fills up a lonely place inside us when a void is created through the loss of a loved one.
*It can make us think and ponder and discern.
Music did all of these things for me as I drove south on Saturday. Most of the time, it made me think, ponder, and discern.
Jeckyll and Hyde: A musical written by Frank Longhorn and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse.
“Lost in the Darkness”
“This is the Moment”
“Nobody Knows Who I Am”
“Pursue the Truth”
“I Must Go On”
“A Brand New Life” … to name a few pieces in this musical.
I listened to these pieces and others as I drove a straight desert road south to the border. The story of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde had so many twists and turns that it more than made up for what the road did not provide.
For starters, the plot begins with Dr. Jeckyll just wanting to discover something to improve humanity. (Well there’s more, but this is the base theme.) He falls in love with a young woman named Emma who as she sings it, “always loved you, always have… always will and your dreams are mine.” And they are forever bonded. Then. THEN! In just one injection of untried formula, he releases a terrible monster that is every evil thing our society tells us to fear and avoid. Jeckyll sings, “What is this thing I feel?… Willing me. Killing me!” And Mr. Hyde answers him by stepping into reality (through Jeckyll) and proceeds to murder, rape, and plunder whatever suits his selfish persona. Emma, Jeckyll’s great love, does not know what to do. She is not aware of this devilish personality as a part of her true love, but she is aware of him drifting further away from her. Emma can’t see where this is going. Yet she stays with Jeckyll, trying to help. Her friends beg her to reconsider but she can only see him through eyes of love, as she sings “In His Eyes I can see all the things he longs to be.” None the less, she can’t understand the change in him anymore than anyone else. No one knows that he is slowly losing himself to Mr. Hyde, a murdering, raping arrogant vision of unholy crap!
As Hyde, Emma’s husband meets people and does things that Dr. Jeckyll would never do in his right mind. Jeckyll fights this ugly side of himself from what was released by an injection that took only seconds to administer into his arm. In the end, he believes that the only way to stop the horror is to take his own life. He does this.
Through this act of madness, everyone whom Jeckyll loved suffers a loss. His true love, Emma, remembers in song that, “When this all began, we knew there’d be a price to pay”… It wasn’t the price she thought it would be either. She had believed she would lose him to his all consuming work; and her partial invisibility would be the price. Instead, it was HIS total and permanent disappearance, as he struggled to save himself from an ugly inner being that threatened to completely overtake him. He committed suicide to kill the beast within him.
In the end, she loved him beyond this life and tells us this as she sings, “You are free now, you’re with me now, where you’ll always be.” And the curve in the road of her life finds peace to help her move on.
It is a tale that is filled with thought provoking issues and beautiful music. Those twists and turns of the plot, expressed through the music and lyrics, made me remember that tragedy is all around us waiting to happen. In fact, it does happen to all of us at one point or another.
On a plane trip seated across from the District Attorney of a prominent city in Texas, I listened to this man unfold thoughts about his job. (People are always telling me the most interesting things.) This DA said that there are actually very few really bad people in the world. There are mostly very good people making very poor choices. For one reason or another, their judgment is clouded and their lives can just unravel. He proceeded to tell me of the many people that were upper class, highly respected, and living “honorable lives” who had made very poor choices. No names, but their stations in life. He told me of their struggles to preserve their dignity and their property and their lives, while their choices brought life and/or hard work tumbling down around them.
I believe he is correct. But further, I also believe that every one of us is making missteps and recovering, missteps and recovering. Some of those steps are of our own doing while others are the sadness of having been tripped up by some other individual’s poor judgment. At one time or another, we all weave on our road, and go under a ladder (or into the mountains). As a result, things happen and we are expected to deal with it as we learn from the painful event.
Have you heard it said that we are not given more in life than we can handle? Hard to believe when the unexpected crap is flying into our faces and reaking havoc with our lives. We travel through these twists and turns, and it is for sure that will do it with grace or anger (maybe both for a while). It is for sure we will need oxygen. It is for sure we will want peace.
Driving that straight road south as I listened to the lyrics unfold the story of Jeckyll and Hyde, it occurred to me that life is not unlike my carsickness… when missteps happen, or misfortune befalls a person. There are these twists and turns in situations for which we have no control. We will feel sick and maybe even panic through the ugliness of what seems determined to unfold. We may even end up at a stand still for a while as we wretch on the side of our personal journey’s path.
Yet as I arrived at the border to do business, I got out of my car thinking the following… for this trip was most certainly a serious matter. I thought to myself, “Look for a window. Open it for the fresh air of new ideas. Strive to find calm in music so that you can think clearly… music written by humans and that which is written on our hearts and souls by God. In doing so, solutions will be clear. I will stand up straight and not be burdened by whatever life has thrown at me.”
May your journey also be filled with discernment from God, and music to enrich your path.
Best… Carolyn Thomas Temple