I have not heard this Woodie Guthrie tune in many years but today the children are dancing to a KIDZONLY version of it. this was the song I had to play on acoustic guitar and sing for my Guitar Final at URI. I played it well, I think. It was fun at the time but also very hard on the fingers. I miss being in the Music department at URI. Those were 5 wonderful years of personal development for me. I was there from 1992 to 1997 and never received my degree. I spread myself too thin and did not follow the advice I ought to have from my advisors in the Career Development Department. Oh well- it's not the end of the world. when I was 23 I thought I knew everything. That's pretty funny to me now. Now I think I really DO know everything. Maybe in ten years from now I will be looking at today's choices with disrepute too.
I seem to be in the spirit of retrospection, so I will indulge further. My first year at URI was the roughest of all the five. I still remember the day my father drove me to URI and dropped me off at my Dorm, Aldrich Dorm. He helped me to my room and immediately left with a shrug and a pat on the shoulder. "Good Luck Kiddo" he said. The words resonated for 5 years after. The simple gesture of just being dumped off and told good luck. No money or other support was given. No promise of seeing one another soon. My mother could not be bothered to come. My brother and sisters though, they were affected. Even I was affected to be separated from them. But I knew that if I wanted anything better than an unwanted pregnancy to define my life, I would have to do this. I would have to leave them. I needed this.
College was harder than I anticipated it would be. Every year I was bombarded with choices and I always spread myself too thin. I wanted to try everything I could and experience things I had never had a chance to. Before long, I was a bit of a local celebrity when I became the DixieLand Band Lead singer/ I can still remember these 2 freshman boys who lived in my dorm would follow me up the stairwell saying "we love you AngelMarie"...I used to sign autographs on campus! Ah, the olden days. I also loved the Music Lab.
I worked there for a while on a WorkStudy job. They had recordings of the most random types of music and during long afternoons monitoring the lab, I reviewed cassette after cassette. I became knowledgeable of world Music and when it came time for MusicHistory in my 3rd year, I felt quite passionate about it. We used to listen to pieces by Smetana and Hayden that were 15 to 20 minutes long. An entire class...just sitting in a darkened classroom listening. we had the Norton Scores to follow along reading the orchestral arrangements while we listened. Afterwards, Professor would come to life, invigorated to see if we felt the same rush of emotions he did during key points in the music. I loved his class. I may not have felt the emotion the first time, but before long, it was second nature to feel the music and experience it as though it were alive.
At some point, music stopped being alive for me. Now I am coming back alive through it. I am thankful for the transformation out of my long depressive state. It has been a very long time. I do not feel depressed anymore. Sometimes, I give in to moments of sadness but overall, I feel healthier than I ever have in my whole life. So many periods from my youth are darkened by depression and now I have found the strength to shed light on each one. It is often painful for me to re-live some things in order to truly put them behind me forever, but this is a necessary evil. When you do it, you must do it quickly and not drag out the task for longer than necessary.
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