#261— DEAD OR ALIVE | INSPIRATION

Music — The Great Age-Eraser

It’s universal — watch the years melt away in front of your eyes

My partner is a fan of big band swing music, and for a few years in a row just before Covid, we ventured to southernmost California over Thanksgiving weekend to take part in the San Diego Jazz Fest and Swing Extravaganza as spectators.

To most it’s considered old-fashioned music, sure, but the fest is an impressive three-day celebration of all things big band, swing, brass, clarinets, banjos, New Orleans jazz, blues, and ragtime, with over 30 rotating bands and several dance floors.

We were so impressed by the talent and the genuine sense of fun. And while the crowd sometimes skewed older, that didn’t stop them from showing off their moves. As the whole world knows, there’s just nothing like live musicians doing their thing, jamming and enjoying live music.

And of course, music from your youth will bring out the kid in even the most sedentary 80-year-old. It reaches in and grabs your soul. That’s why health care providers often use music when dealing with Alzheimer’s patients — somehow it breaks through the hase of the disease and brings the person back, at least for a few moments.

But what I always love witnessing with live music is the transformation on the faces and in the bodies of the musicians.

Let’s say it’s a group of guys all in their mid-60s — one is a retired accountant, the other is finishing up his time as a high school teacher, and the third is a former private investigator maybe with money problems, and they all drove to the gig tired — yet as you watch them doing their thing, having some musical interplay and bouncing to the music, the years disappear from their faces and they are fully in the moment and so happily alive.

And oh, how I wish we all could remain in that magical zone or headspace that music can bring.

No responsibilities, no kids nagging at home, no deadlines looming — just you and the music, doing what you may’ve been put on this earth to do.

It sounds dramatic, but not when you consider the amount of folks who once dreamed of starting a band and hitting it big, or joining some orchestra or signing with a big manager — but life intervened and bills and responsibilities arrived and they had to settle for a “real job.”

Even so, they’d been bitten by the bug, and the music still lingered. What’s great about the true musicians is that it’s always still there under the surface.

I can be passing a small quartet playing in a corner at a holiday office party, a small town orchestra at the county fair or even some pros playing in the pit of a Broadway musical, and I get chills when I watch their faces as they’re enjoying their calling or craft in front of an audience, no matter how small.

The same can maybe be said about musical theater performers or dancers on stage. I was a musical actor for years and was always grateful and fully emotionally invested while performing, yet it was a measured performance, with a separation from the audience — a presentation, often behind a proscenium.

But I find with musicians, it somehow reaches another level, a more genuine level, that I so wish I could be a part of.

Alas, I was so focused on singing as a young man that I never took the time to learn an instrument. I envy those who can sit down and tickle the ivories, pick out some chords on the guitar, improv in a band with their clarinet or trumpet, or bring rhythm to a band with their drum… and have the years melt away.

These are the folks who help bring us all back to something fun and even primal — with music. And while there’s been a big push to eliminate music and arts education, just think of the gigantic loss to all of us if this were to continue.

Forty years from now, it would still be nice to encounter some old gals and dudes jamming on the street corner, doing their thing, feeling alive, helping us feel alive, before heading home to reality.

We can all hope.

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