Living Life at Full Volume

              How long did Rip Van Winkle sleep?  However long it was, that’s how long I’ve been sleeping or at least sleep walking.

              Forever it seems.

              I grew up with music. A lot of music. Folk music, rock music, The Monkees (whatever they were) Deep Purple and my second album, after Sean Cassidy, was the Rolling Stones. I grew up with music all around me.  I grew up singing camp songs loudly with my family in the car as we travelled.  Well, mostly my mom and my brother but if my dad was in the mood we could get him to chime in with “blue, blue, blue, blue” when we were singing “Gloryland”.  Even not so many years ago my sister and I would each find our notes and sing “Bye, Bye Love” in perfect harmony.

I couldn’t sleep with the radio on because I would wake myself up to sing along when a beloved song came on.  I was always in choirs, got academic credit to sing in high school and went on to become the Karaoke Queen of Hamilton Ontario.  (Sometimes this fact has been disputed but those closest to me who followed the circuit know it to be true….)

              There has always been music in my world.

              When I met him he was shiny in the sun.  He was handsome and harmless – a perfect combination for me at the time.  When I found that he was a real-life-bonified rock star I knew that my life was complete.

              Except I ended up being plunged into a kind of silence I’d never known.

              He had lived the true rock star life.  Every person who had a radio in the 80’s – especially the girls, knew his band and who they were.  He rocked the stages with the true rock and roll legends and was known by name by some of the best known producers in the country.

              He was, well, he was MY rock star.

              So surely the music would continue, right?

              Here’s what I didn’t know about a musical prodigy.  It was all in his head.  The music played on an endless loop in his mind and occupied a lot of his time.  The rifts, the melodies would come to him in a dream and I would wake to him plunking out the notes on a tiny antique piano that lived beside the bed.  Inspiration could – and did – strike at any time.

              But we had no stereo.

              We had no compact CD player.

              We had no discreetly placed speakers.

              When I would start to sing in the car with the kids, just as I had always done when I was little, he would turn the radio on and tune it into the news.

              So I stopped singing.

              The music was all in his head.  If he got distracted by the radio – by another artist – he might lose his inspiration and the music of his imagination would end.

              So there was no music for the rest of us to enjoy.  Even when he was composing he put his headphones and pounded out the notes on his keyboard – so that all we heard was the clunk, clunk, clunk of the rhythm that for him had tone….

              There was no music in my world, only in his.

              We split up four years ago now.  It was hard as all endings tend to be, but it was really the only way it could have gone.  No regrets.  We split around the time that my pain – my physical pain, really began.

              It’s been a long, physically painful journey but the details are not important except to say that it’s finally been fixed.  New hip, no pain and a spring in my step for the first time in forever.

              And most importantly, no more pills.  No more drugs to start the day, no more “just in case” breakthrough meds.  No more “I’ll never get to sleep if I take only one…”  Now, now I take Advil.  Like twice a week.

              No more drugs.

              And the consequence?  It’s like someone took my life off of mute.

              Ladies and gentlemen, live and in technicolour we present…

              Tara.

              Thoughts are clearer.  Colours are brighter.  Dreams are, well, dreams are vivid…..

              And music.  I’d forgotten even that it had been missing from my life.  I’d forgotten how it makes my heart sing even while the melody rises from my lips.  I’d forgotten that it can change my heartbeat with its rhythm.  I’d forgotten that it makes my body want to move…for my eyes to close, for my head to shake and for my hips to sway.  I’d forgotten that the notes, the melody, the lyrics, the voices and the rhythm all backed by the instruments in chorus, I’d forgotten that they all come together to…to change you.

               I have certainly been changed.  My ears are open, my heart is waiting....I'm ready to live my life at full volume.  Turn it up!