Turning it Down

The music wouldn’t stop. In fact, it was getting louder. And as the hours stretched across the day, I couldn’t escape it. A friend visiting our campsite brought with him a very loud speaker that he seemed to take everywhere he went. Even when we were in the water bodysurfing, he lugged it to the beach and blasted the music loud enough to hear it through the surf. At one point I got into the backseat of my car, lay down, and put on my noise cancelling headphones just to get a break from the onslaught. It was a lot.

I confess to my own dramatic flare at times. I own this about myself. And I realized that none of the other people I was with seemed bothered in the slightest by the music. In fact everyone else was loving it, adding to the mood of the experience for them. And so I resisted my impulse to curb the music…mostly. I did remark to my friend whose birthday we were celebrating, “It’s killing me, man.” And that friend asked that the music be turned down. I was grateful for the slightly mellower vibe with the quieter music, but I was thinking about other things by then.

Everything he was playing was highly produced electronic music. Some of the songs were clever remixed versions of familiar tunes I knew. And others included samples of singers playing to thumping rhythms. But as I heard friends asking for particular songs and talking about the artists who arrange these songs, I started to realize how willfully ignorant I was to an entire world of music that is deeply affecting and widely loved by people, and in particular, people younger than I am. And as one song started, my speaker-wielding friend commented that it doesn’t have any lyrics…but there it was “I got a feeling that I never, never had before.”

Because it was a sample of a song, they didn’t think of it as lyrics. And it was clear they didn’t know who was singing. Because where I come from, when Etta James sings, you listen. This song sampled the opening to Something’s Got a Hold on Me, which typified the uptempo hits James had before so much of her life was ravaged by heroin and personal tragedy. And the thump of the speaker seemed less in that moment, when a voice from beyond reminded me that we can get better.

I thought of the life we were celebrating around the fire and how at times I wondered whether what had a hold on that life would be too much for it to bear. And as the fire warmed us all against the night breezes, I had a feeling like I’d never, never had before. I thought of the return Etta James made to music, and the incalculable ways she changed music, bending genres and mastering styles in the way only genius can. And I thought of my friend, smiling, watching all of his friends enjoy the music for his birthday, and the blessing of learning what’s killing us, and finding the strength at long last to turn it down.

Many blessings, friends.
Rev. T. J.
minister@unitariansofhi.org