Harbor

The music flows over me, piano notes sliding past each other in a shimmering cascade. As Vienna Teng sings “Harbor” from my computer, I can’t help but join in, although all I know so far is the chorus.

I’d only heard of Vienna that day, when she was mentioned in a brief article in The Boston Globe. She was playing locally that night, and when I checked out her website and listened to some clips, I knew I wanted to go. I hadn’t heard music like this in a long time — music that made me sit up because I could feel it moving through me. But the 7 pm show was sold out, and the 10 pm was all that was left.

Given the drive into the city, that my husband would have to get to work early the next day, and that I didn’t want to spend the money for the concert until my new job started, I decided not to go. 10 PM was late for me now, though truthfully I had never liked to go out late, and did it when I was younger because it was the only way to see the bands I liked.

Back then, I was dating a guy who was more into music than any human being had a right to be. We didn’t have much besides music in common, and even then, because he wasn’t one to discuss feelings, I had to extrapolate those feelings from his multiple bins of cassettes and CDs. We never talked about it, but I thought he felt the same way about music as I did, with that inexpressible fullness of the soul as the right song came on.

As far as I knew, he’d never played any instruments, and I only heard him sing once. But he loved nothing more than discussing the minutiae of music. I loved to sing, but I didn’t keep track of B-sides or back-up guitarists, and just as we finished covering the extent of my limited knowledge, we broke up.

The funny thing was that when I stopped seeing him, I found that the only way I could express my feelings was through music. I bought a four-track recorder, borrowed my sister’s synthesizer, and dragged out my dusty guitar. I’d never learned to play the guitar, but I didn’t let that stop me. Randomly plucking open strings, I spent my nights holed up in my room, writing and recording.

The first song I wrote was so bad that I never bothered to listen to it again after I’d finished it. During that year, I recorded maybe twenty songs, of which only two or three songs were actually presentable to the public. These few turned out to be the ones I’d collaborated on — one, a song to which my younger sister had added accompaniment with her reclaimed synthesizer, and the others by the ex’s best friend, who had recorded his guitar parts separately before passing the tape to me for vocals and lyrics.

When I met Chris, I stopped recording my songs. I didn’t do it deliberately, but it happened immediately. All of my songs revolved around the same theme, that of unhappiness, so it wasn’t surprising that as I became happier, I ran out of things to say in my music. Chris and I didn’t have the same taste in music, and I started to forget how it felt when a song moved me. For a while I was busy living with him, raising our puppies, being married. All I needed was a career, and my life would be complete.

Five years and six jobs later, I knew I was wrong. Work was important, but it didn’t fill me up the way I’d expected. Life with Chris was better than I had ever dreamed, but there was still something missing that I couldn’t name.

I listened to Vienna Teng’s concert live that night, from the Club Passim website. I stayed up until midnight listening. I couldn’t sing like her and I couldn’t play any instrument like her. But when she sang and played, I felt something inside me answering her.

The songs I recorded years ago were about boys who’d done me wrong, the anger left inside me, and the sadness. They were told in the only language the first boy could understand, a language driven by dissonance and heartbreak.

Today I don’t have anyone with whom to collaborate, and my guitar skills have remained at the same terrible level after all the years. But as Vienna’s fingers dance up and down in a syncopated cascade of joy, I hear the truth I can’t ignore. I think back to the songs I wrote so long ago about a boy who left, and as I forgive him and forgive myself, I can hear singing inside me again. And finally, I understand that the songs are different now, and I’m ready for them.

Posted by: Supersonic Jane | April 9, 2004 | 11:38 am
Posted in: Entertainment/News