It's not a subject I touch upon with any frankness or comfort. This is not to say that my growing up was horrid, simply that I tend to look at it from a subjective fictional standpoint. Julie never had a childhood, strictly speaking...it all gets very complicated and quantum. And meta. I'm not a fan of meta. Suffice to say, when I write about my childhood, I tend to do so through a fictional lens...or a poetic lens, more accurately. Still fictional.
But this story is not.
If there is one thing I return to time and time again as the great healer, the balm for deep wounds, the life preserver (in literal terms at times), it is music. It speaks to me and for me when I have no ability to find the words I need.
I got my first stereo as a present for graduating elementary school. Combined with the fact that I finally had a room of my own, this was a pretty major development in my life. I could listen to records and tapes in my room, create mix tapes back when mix tapes were totally cool (and chicken out at giving them to anyone) and discover more music than I knew was possible.
Looking back at that, 28 years later, I laugh, because there was even more out there than I knew. But at 14, radio was the great wide open. And combined with the fact that my listening had shifted radically from pop stuff to the Doors and Frank Zappa and the Dead and so on, I was able to find stations that (at the time) sated that need. I mostly listened to WZZO out of Bethlehem...and this was in the day when their play list was significantly larger than it is now, and you actually heard deep cuts on air. So WZZO was my station.
Except for Sundays.
Sunday was for WYSP.
Early evenings were spent with Ed Sciaky on the Sunday Night Alternative. I never knew from week to week what I'd hear...ad that was the best part. I can't even remember everything I heard there for the first time...Spirit for sure, before Randy California passed away. Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight Festival. Loads of other old concerts...probably early Genesis. It was magical. And one of the most magical parts was the opening, when everything was quiet and then an acoustic guitar would start playing an amazingly gorgeous melody...Jorma Kaukonen, Jefferson Airplane, and Embryonic Journey. To this day I can't hear that without being transported back to that youth sitting in their room, trying to figure themselves out and why they felt the way they did, and finding the most comfort and understanding and companionship in music.
The second best thing on Sunday nights was also on WYSP, and that was the Sunday Night Sixpack...6 albums played in their entirety. This was generally blank tape time for me, and I probably recorded a hundred tapes worth of music that I eventually bought when I got older. I discovered King Crimson, and In the Court of the Crimson King. I discovered Yes. And Emerson Lake and Palmer. And so much more.
So much of the foundation of my listening and appreciation and love of music came from those days and nights. Late night listening on headphones...moving the stereo and speakers to the other end of the room so I could slip out the window, lay down on the roof of the 1 story addition that had been built onto our house, and watch the stars while music played, always careful not to fall asleep out of fear of waking up very very suddenly.
It's not the fall that hurts, it's the sudden stop at the end.
Those days were the first days music saved me. Without it, I wouldn't be here to blog, for one reason or another. But I found solace, and understanding, and a lack of judgment in music. It asked only that I listen with an open mind, and that I gave in abundance in repayment for the gifts I received in return.
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