Guitar, Interrupted

Recently and for the second time, I watched Sir Paul McCartney receive the Gershwin Award on PBS's In Performance at the White House series. Such wonderful music. I watched entranced as performer after performer came out to offer an interpretation of this or that miracle from his musical treasure trove. Almost every melody and lyric could evoke a tear but none so strong as when he finally rose to give us three or four himself.

My emotion reached its crescendo when he concluded with Yesterday. He described how the melody just came to him - fully formed - during a night's sleep although he admitted the lyric took some massaging. I'm left to pray that just once - even if it's just for me and no one else ever hears it - I could be so inspired. It is MUSIC that tells me that I am human. What a gift! What power to move the human spirit.

Jefferson wrote "I cannot live without books." I don't want to either, but it is music that I cannot live without. It communicates the essence of life, and I know that the inability to perform - to share what I am feeling in this most intimate fashion - is what I miss the most from my younger and healthier days. It is a loss most profound.

TGB