One of the things I've found as I've been revisiting the memories of my childhood home is the music of my older brother, Paul. I was able to connect with a friend of his recently, and as we have talked I've learned more about him and his guitars, his history of playing music and being a part of the music industry, and I've gotten more of an insight into my brother as a musician.
There's something very interesting about being related to someone who is very talented. I knew my brother my whole life because he was ten years older than I am, and I always loved him, but though I knew he was someone who loved to play guitar and who played in bands for most of his life all over the country and the world, and though I knew he'd started making CD's and producing his own music and I'd really enjoyed some of the ones that he'd sent to me, the music he was making was in a way so familiar to me that it just seemed like something he did. It's not to say in any way that I didn't recognize his talent. I knew how skilled he was, but I also didn't quite grasp how important his guitar playing and his music was to him until I started talking to his friend and remembering and being reminded of my experiences of my brother from the past.
Paul was never without his guitars. He traveled everywhere with them. And it was the same with his music. I have listened to the music I listen to in large part because of what I learned from him, growing up and listening to the music he played, the bands and performers and records and then tapes and eventually CD's he was playing and making. In so many photographs I have of him he has a guitar in his hands, or if he doesn't you get the feeling that it's somewhere nearby and he's about to pick it up again.
In speaking with his friend, I've learned that not only did he make CD's, but he was always working on new tracks and play lists, adjusting things, tinkering with things, trying to perfect what he was creating. One of the first things his friend asked me when we first started speaking, was whether I could send him copies of the CD's I have of Paul's music because his had been taken from his truck. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to make copies for him of the ones I have, but I remembered a box of them existed in the home I grew up in, and I looked for them and found them immediately. It was almost as if it was somewhere in my heart and mind already, as if I'd dreamed it or knew it, or was being shown where they were by a brother who wanted me to connect more deeply with him between the worlds where we both live.
When I found the box of CD's I saw that not only were there copies of things that I had that my brother had sent to me years ago, but there was one CD that I didn't have a copy of and several others that seemed to be works in progress or what he was describing as rough cuts, or in some cases what seemed to be working versions of the final CD's. I started listening to the ones that I hadn't heard before, listening to the ones that were not titled, and downloading and sending music to my brother's friend as I discovered it. At one point he asked me to send him the song lists from the CD's because he thought that there might be some differences in the ones that he had heard before. When I opened up one of the CD's that was one I'd always particularly loved, I saw that there was a notation on it in my brother's handwriting, dedicating it to me. The copy that I have does not have that written on it, and my mother had never told me about it. It hit me so deeply to see that, to know that this particular CD that had already resonated so deeply with me for years was one that he had dedicated it to me.
It's been many years since he has gone to live in the heavenly realms, and as I wrote in a poem at the time, his spirit is still so much a part of my life that there is some reminder at many different times of him, of his music, of his voice, of the way he spoke to me, of the way he took care of me, of the way I now know he loved me. Having that love in tangible form, calling to me from memory, is a precious gift, and one I have to give thanks to his friend for too, because he cared about my brother and his music enough to ask me to make copies to share with him and to listen with me deeply and carefully to the music and stories and creative journey of my brother's life.
