Riffing Through our Hearts

One morning last week I woke up from a dream with a vision, an image.  It was a heart that could be riffed through like a stack of cards, and each “slice” was like a record, with grooves, baby.  It turns out that it was the birthday of Etta James.  Her “Roll with Me Henry” was also titled “Wallflower”.  I was only 9, but already knew that I would be a wallflower for awhile.  My cousin Cathy would unselfconsciously jitterbug with the black-painted post in my uncle’s basement in front of everybody, beckoning me to dance with her.  But to my shy self, the thought of dancing was terrifying.   But by the time “At Last” was recorded I was 14, and indeed a wallflower, and understood completely how wonderful it would be if at last a girl would come along and save me from my wall. 

Our daughter in Cleveland serves the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in spreading the good news – that our hearts are indeed stacks of records, juke boxes of memory.  Research supports the connection – here’s a link to a recent study.   But I like my waking image, the heart as a stack of records.

I said records, not internet- downloaded MP3’s or laser-cut CDs, or even magnetic tapes.  Records were discs of vinyl that started out like our brains, smooth and clear.  The vibrations of music were gathered by a microphone, connected by wires to a

needle on a turntable.  The disc was turned and a needle dragged across it, cutting a groove that carried those vibrations.  The finished disc was a record of that music.  It could be retrieved, put on a turntable, and the needle would ride that groove and liberate those same vibrations from their dormancy, and they would find their way to a speaker, and…music.

But as the research above describes, the music that enters our ears does the same thing.  It cuts a groove in the mental disc of moment.  When we retrieve the music, it is the moment that is awakened in us, liberated from its dormancy.  Music takes us back, not by means of internet or laser or magnetism or wires; music takes us back by blood, this fluid of life that is pumped by our hearts that beat, beat, beat. 

Oh, just eight years after Etta James recorded “At Last”, my love did come along.  That was 42 years ago, and we’ve been dancing in front of everybody ever since.