| Saying Goodbye |
[28 Oct 2009|01:06pm] |
So the past few months, I have been working on a concept album. Last night, I listened to the songs I have so far for the first time since Mom died.
The album concept, on the surface, is the story of a space flight. But underneath, it is an allegory for my own life and, to a larger extent, the meaning of life in general and the inevitable approach of death.
The first song on the album is titled "Saying Goodbye." Within the primary album concept, it is me saying goodbye to the people I love as I leave on to go on a space journey for an unspecified length of time. But underneath, it is about me saying goodbye to my mom and my childhood when I first left home to begin my adult life so many years ago.
Part of the lyric is "Here we are saying goodbye, but only for a little while, Mama I'll fly... We'll all get together, one of these days."
And in listening last night, I realised this song, and so many songs on the album, now have another level of meaning they did not have before, particularly the last song on the album in which I finally see what's on the Other Side.
And I cried. Not because it was sad, but because it took me to the place where my mother is now and it is so much more beautiful than I had even imagined. Both the first and final songs are only partially completed and up until now the first had always been about saying goodbye to my mother here on Earth and the last had taken me to where my father is in the afterlife. My mom had gotten to hear that last song, and she knew what it was about. And now it will take me to her as well.
I can only hope that I can somehow finish this song in a way that comes close to expressing what I have seen. I'm not sure any words or music or sound on earth could even begin to do it justice. There are no words. I am counting on my parents to guide me.
[In the autobiographical allegory of the story, the final song represents living through some terrible trauma — whether it be a break-up or illness or violence or the death of a loved one or whatever — and making it through that trauma to come out the other side a stronger person and beginning to live again.]
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