Rhythm and Rhyme

I'm amazed by many aspects of music. Classical music, rock music, pop music, jazz, country music and other forms of music astonish me. One thing I'm noticing more and more in all forms of music are the rhythms and rhymes. It may seem obvious that music contains elements of both, but it's still rather amazing to me.

No matter how complex the rhythms may be, it all begins with a steady beat. Obviously, the beat of a song can change many times, but for the songs whose beat does not change, you can use a metronome or a ticking clock and see that the beat stays constant.  On stage or in the recording studio there is usually no metronome and yet the beat stays constant.  It's like a machine generates it, but the musicians, especially the percussionists,  are the ones who stay true to the steady beat over the space of several minutes. Use your own watch to see that this phenomenon is true. But then there are the rhythms around that steady beat.  Rhythms can be surprisingly complex in any form of music.  I would suggest that the rhythms of country music are the most predictable and least complex, but that in itself doesn't make the music inferior to any other style of music. I'm not much of a fan of country music, but I do respect certain musical and technical details. The most important part of country songs are the stories they tell.

But more than the rhythms, the rhymes are what amaze me the most.  Not all songs rhyme and the rhymes many times are not consistent. But the surprising thing is how many songs do rhyme throughout.  What I'm noticing is how the perfectly placed word not only rhymes, but makes textual sense as well. The word works in both ways simultaneously. Furthermore, the word stays true to the rhythm of the text and the music. Sometimes one or the other aspects of the word is a bit of a stretch, but many times it's not. Many times the word is perfect.

Here is an example from the opening lyrics of Dan Fogelberg's Netherlands.

"High on this mountain 

the clouds down below

I'm feeling so strong and alive

From this rocky perch

I'll continue to search

For the wind

And the snow

And the sky."

The rhythm is consistent throughout. The rhymes are not evenly distributed but get the job done. "Alive" and "sky" do not rhyme exactly but they work.  "Perch" and "search" as I suggested make both a rhyme and are perfect textual companions.

Here's another example from Linda Ronstadt's You're No Good

"Feeling better now that we're through

Feeling better because I'm over you

I learned my lesson it left a scar

Now I see how you really are.

I broke a heart that's gentle and true

Well I broke a heart over someone like you.

I beg his forgiveness on bended knee

I wouldn't blame him if he said to me.

You're no good..."

The rhythm of these words is not as consistent as with Neverlands, but the rhymes are much more uniform.

The 5th Dimension, Aquarius

"When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars."

"Mars"?  "Stars"?  Perfect

My last example are lyrics that are rhythmically perfect as well as contain uniform rhymes. Chicago's 25 or 6 to 4.

"Waiting for the break of day

Searching for something to say

Dancing lights against the sky

Giving up I close my eyes

Sitting cross-legged on the floor

25 or 6 to 4."

In case you've ever wondered, this means by the watch it's 25 or 26 minutes before 4 o'clock.

There are examples into the millions to illustrate my point, but I'll  just leave it at that.

Now for my life analogy. Even if it feels like your life has no rhythm or rhyme, that it's a stream of mostly meaningless events, use music to say that's not true.  I am of the opinion that those rhythmic and rhyming lyrics find the musician and not the other way around.  The musician is inspired with the idea and the rhythmic text begins to flow complete with all the rhymes. You may not always see it, but your life makes sense as well.  Over time the ups and downs, highs and lows, failures and successes, starts and stops, births and deaths all begin to form a pattern. The pattern may not be the one you desired or predicted, but it all becomes a meaningful pattern nonetheless. Many times the people around you can see it better than you. When someone is encouraging you, it's because she has a perspective you don't have. Listen and let her encourage you.

All this leads to the oft-quoted verse:

"Roses are red

Violets are blue

Some poems rhyme

And some don't."

A Touch of Wonder

Yesterday afternoon XM radio played the Eagles'  Desperado on The Bridge, Channel 32. Although the story the song conjures up happened at Christmas, this in not a Christmas story.  It's a story about my life. And that my life is good.

My senior year at Samford University in 1974, my choir recorded an album at the end of the fall semester.  Because of my five year degree I actually had two senior years.  This was the first one. This recording process involved staying at school a day after school was out for Christmas. The dorms were already closed for the holidays, but for reasons I don't remember, I was able to stay in the dorm that extra night.  That night when I walked into Crawford Johnson Hall and walked up the two flights of stairs to my hall,  I could hear music as soon as I entered the stairwell.  As I approached my hall, Dennis' stereo was playing Desperado. To say there was a magical quality about the music is an under statement. The music echoing through the empty halls and rooms sounded like music in a cathedral or a cavern. I know for a fact that Dennis and I were the only two people on the hall and I'm fairly sure we were the only two people in the dorm.

To that point in my life, I had never been desperate.  I'd been very upset; I'd been lost physically and emotionally. I'd been hungry, but not starving. I had approached despair, but I had never been desperate.  And yet as I walked toward his room and listened to the rest of the song, I identified with every word.  But it wasn't the just the words that were affecting  me, it was the words being beautifully sung by Don Henley. And that simple yet powerful accompaniment. There was no sense of loneliness, but a powerful sense of being alone.

"Desperado why don't you come to your senses?
Come down from your fences.
Open the gate. It may be rainin'
But there's a rainbow above you
You better let somebody love you before it's too late."

Although the definition of "desperado" is a desperate or reckless person, the western cowboy seems much more reckless to me than desperate.  And maybe that's what I was feeling that night, not the desperation of a lost soul, but the wide open spaces of the wild, wild west. Is this Alabama or is it Montana?

As I walked down the hall to my room, I could still  hear the music loud and clear. And I could still feel its effect. But I was feeling much more than reverberating music , I was feeling something else.   In that moment everything about my life converged at the dorm room in CJ at Samford University. Ending another semester of college made perfectly good sense. Making the recording with my choir made perfectly good sense.  Staying over a night in an empty dormitory made perfectly good sense. My pending trip to Jasper to complete my Christmas music responsibilities and then to Enterprise, Alabama for a break made perfectly good sense.  Everything in the universe made perfectly good sense. If Scotty had beamed me up, I would not have been entirely surprised.  I had reached a point of existential arrival. I could not have been more content.

Yesterday afternoon as I listened to the song, there was no "profound":existential experience.  It was just a nice song on a beautiful day. But I remembered that night forty three years ago and I remembered that sublime and solitary experience. I also recollected that in 1974, I "let somebody love me", a girl from Jasper, Alabama. We've been married forty one years.

After Jacob's profound dream of the angels ascending and descending a ladder, he erected a stone, the stone that had been his pillow,  and called the place Beth-El, the House of God. About twenty years ago Samford University gutted Crawford Johnson Hall an erected the school's religion building. Nearly ten years ago I was wandering around campus alone when a young man approached me.  He introduced himself as from the Alumni Affairs office  He asked me if there was something I wanted to see.  I said, "As a matter of fact I would like to try to find my dorm room in the religion building." I explained to him where it was and that it had a view of Wright Performing Hall. We made our way across campus, entered the rotunda of the School of Religion and walked up two flights of mahogany stairs. We walked down the hall and  I found the door to my room.  We entered the room to find that it had become a small classroom. Board, desks, the whole thing. It had been glorified!  But it had not become the House of God when the new building was built.  It had become the House of God in December of 1974. All it took was a song playing on a record player, a friend and an empty dorm. Sometimes only vacancy can be filled with wonder.  "Life is difficult" M. Scott Peck said.  But life is good. I've known that for a long time, but seldom like I knew it that night  in CJ Hall. I have a son and a granddaughter. I have certainly known much wonder since then  But it was that night at Christmas 1974 that for the first time in my life, I knew the wonder of it all.

Just because I don't believe in your God, doesn't make me an atheist.

You ask, “How can you not believe in God and not be an atheist?”  The answer to your question all starts with your definition of God. And whose God are you talking about? Is your God the God who parted the Red Sea so that Israel could walk across on dry ground?  Or is your God the one who  helped your favorite team win a national championship?  The ecstatic coach certainly believes it was  God who won the game.  I would suggest that the offensive line had a lot to do with it, but not according to the coach. It was God.  Is your God the one who was present in the burning bush that was not consumed by fire?  Or is your God the one  who just helped you find a parking place on a very busy downtown street?

I want to suggest that none of us “believes in God”.  We believe in an idea of God.  And that idea has been conditioned over our lifetimes. We have been conditioned by our parents and grandparents,  our pastors and Sunday School teachers. We’ve certainly been conditioned by our Bibles. But then you have to consider that it’s not the Bible, but it’s our understanding of the Bible that we believe in.  I know people who say, “I believe the Bible. I believe all of it.” But do they? There are 66 books in the Protestant Bible which contain 1189 chapters and 31,102 verses. There are 783,137 words in the authorized King James Version of the Bible. That’s a lot of chapters, verses and words to believe. When you say,  “I believe all of the Bible” you have said a lot. How can you believe the parts of the Bible you've never read and taken to heart? I heard a sermon years ago in a Southern Baptist church that was  entitled, “Is it Bible or is it Mama?”  This sermon that morning was not well-received  by the good folk of the First Baptist Church.

But let’s get back to the matter of God.  You say, “I don’t just believe in a concept of God, an idea of God, I believe in the living God.  I have had personal experience with this God”.  I don’t doubt that.  Just this weekend I talked with someone who shared a powerful, mystical experience thirty seven years ago in  a chapel of a 4H camp in Weston, West Virginia.  There were about 40 people, mostly teenagers,  in that chapel when something happened. One of the youth was sharing a devotion when it happened. The room was not filled with smoke, but it was filled with something. I don’t know what happened. None of us knew what happened. But  something happened. For about forty five minutes we were  overcome with love and a sense of Presence in the room. The entire group was crying, hugging and trying to make sense of what was they were feeling. This simultaneous experience happened to us at approximately 5:30pm on Sunday, June 30, 1981. So I can tell you the time and take you to the place, but I can’t tell you what happened. I can only walk into the room with you and say, “This is where it happened.”  So did this prove that there’s a God? There was a devout agnostic in that room.  She was not willing to say that the experience proved there was a God, but she agreed that something powerful happened.  So I agree that it didn’t necessarily prove that there’s a God. It proved that when 40 people are in a room united in love, joined in heart and purpose, strange and wonderful  things can happen. But we would be wrong to encourage people to believe in the 4H God. Just because it happened to us, doesn’t mean it needs to happen to anyone else. And we certainly shouldn’t try to replicate the experience. Jacob called the place of his dream Beth-El, the house of God. If I had to name it, I guess I would call that chapel-"The place where it happened."

Just because I don’t believe in your God who affects the  outcome of  football games, doesn’t make me  an atheist.  Just because I don’t believe that the God of all the Universe finds parking places for me, doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in God. It just means I don’t believe in your God. Just because I strongly doubt the truth of “everything happens for a reason,” doesn’t mean I don’t have strong convictions about spiritual matters. I just don't have strong convictions about your spiritual matters.

I heard the story several years ago about a family standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon for the first time.  The twelve year old son, overwhelmed by the experience, looked up at his dad and said, "Something happened here."  Sometimes that's about all you can say.

Auburn has the ball fourth and goal on Alabama's  three yard line.  There are two seconds on the clock. With Auburn down by six, the Iron Bowl will be won or lost on this play.  In that moment, have I ever prayed?  Not that I'm willing to admit.