A Home Song

This past week, I had a very unique experience. For the first time in my life, my home was shared with no one. Ever since my birth, the houses that I lived in always contained more than merely myself. For the first 19 years of my life, I lived with my family. After that, I spent two years in different houses throughout the northeast of Brasil. Following that, I spent eight months living with various roommates who all became good friends. Finally, I have spent the last glorious 15 months living with a woman. Not just any woman, but my wife. My beautiful, lovely, artistic, and wonderful wife.

However, her artistic nature sent her off to New York to meet with artists, studios, guilds, museums, and anything else associated with her chosen interest. Naturally, my intentions were to be with her, yet my interests left me here. Her trip to NY left me with the opportunity to live alone. Never before have I spent evenings by myself or slept under a private rooftop. 


What makes a home anyway? Do construction workers take into account the inhabitants of their creations? Does anybody think of the perfect mix to solidify a home? I have a theory:

First, home is a place where you expect to feel wanted. Take the young university student for example: he/she anticipates that, once past the front door, the feeling of received will be love and desire. 

When I went to Brasil, I wondered how I was supposed to make it home. Here is a great example of the places that I assumed to call home:

The Yellow one is mine, the rest of the street follows.  We basically share walls.

I wasn't entirely sure how I was supposed to make a glorified shed (with no ceiling and empty inside areas) a home. Little did I know in six months time I would be used to the environment. I anticipated coming here each night to relax and sleep.

While there, I encountered people who spent time around my home city (Orem). My greatest query, left unanswered since I didn't have the nerve to ask the question, was this: Did you enjoy coming back home (to Brasil from Orem)? In my mind, I somehow contrived that living in Orem, UT was infinitely better than living in a place similar to the picture above. However, I overlooked the quality of life that the family and friends can bring to someone. If I had asked the question, I'm sure the answer would been in the affirmative. Anyone would choose this^ over somewhere else if it meant feeling wanted.

Second, home is a place of familiarity. Take a lesson from my cat. Her name is Willow: 

When she first came to our home, she would not come out of her pet carrier. She was extremely timid. Her mom passed away soon after she was born, so she wasn't sure exactly what to expect with life. For the first couple days, she found hiding spaces under the cabinets where we couldn't reach her. She would never emerge, even with toy and tuna offerings. We grew worried...

However, with cats, they need to become familiar with a new place before they can be themselves. They need to associate their smell with their surroundings, and they need to associate humans with food, care, and affection. After the two nights under the cabinets, Willow reappeared. Nowadays, she can't spend five minutes away from us. Even as I write this blog, she sleeps under my chair. If I were to move to the bed, she would most likely follow. Willow, just like us all, need familiarity to call a place a home. I feel that for us non-felines, familiarity comes much more from other people and much less from surrounding circumstances. 

Lastly, home needs to be a creation. Wherever people decide to live, whether alone or together, they need to feel a personal investment in that place. This could be pictures of those whom we are most familiar with. The personal investment could also be as simple as personally choosing a place to live. 

Take this for example: this is a picture of our bar. We barely finished re-panelling the back of it with a white bead board. We are both have no experience in home improvement, but we still were able to make it look nice! It's our own personal touch to the place we call home!

So, if I had any advice for anyone who is searching for someone to share their home with, it would probably be something like this: Seek out those who you miss in their absence. Chances are, if you are excited when they come home after a week or more away, you'll probably be just as excited to see them  after being apart for any incremental amount of time. 

I conclude with the words of Henry Van Dyke: emphasis added

"I read within a poet's book 
A word that starred the page:
"Stone walls do not a prison make, 
Nor iron bars a cage!" 

Yes, that is true; and something more
You'll find, where'er you roam,
That marble floors and gilded walls
Can never make a home. 

But every house where Love abides,
And Friendship is a guest,
Is surely home, and home-sweet-home:
For there the heart can rest."

Moments musicaux

I barely came home from another jazz concert that I attended, this time at BYU. At this particular concert, much of the charts they selected weren't my taste (which is okay). I was listening with disdain, wondering when the intermission would come. 

However, right after the intermission, the lead tenor came out on stage. With the spotlight on him, and no one in the background, he started to play a simple bluesy rift. Bop-bop-baaaaa....over and over again. 

Pretty soon this simple rift became a maelstrom of notes. He was playing bass for himself, melody, and even high color notes. All single handedly.Mind you, there were some parts where he wasn't even playing notes. He was merely tapping keys and breathing air through his instrument and it was still musical. 

The band meandered out after five minutes and complemented his solo. He then went off: up and down, up and down, playing two notes at a time (which is nie impossible on a saxophone). Oh my goodness, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. 

The piano had a solo about halfway through the song, but he had to wait for about one minute for all the applause to die down from the tenor solo. He then plinked out a few notes, but the audience wasn't listening. We were still in shock from the tenor player. Luckily, he got back up to finish of the song.

Now, I'm not a big fan of standing ovations. I feel like many people give them out of sympathy, rather than actual musical genius (and especially in the Utah area...we give them out like free samples). I especially am not a fan of it in the middle of a concert. But, when this tenor was done with his song, I was up (luckily with the rest of the crowd) because I had experienced what I considered to be one of those profound "musical moments" that only happen in life a few times. 

These "musical moments" occur when something you just witnessed and heard shot through your body and made you gasp in awe. Every time you experience them, they make you feel like your life had just changed in some awesome crazy way, merely by listening to sound. A beautiful, ravaging, phenomenal sound. 

I can name only a couple of other "musical moments" (i.e. singing beautiful choral tunes in a NY cathedral, witnessing Sissel sing an absolutely piercing (in a good way) european christmas carol, being blown away from the first hearing of First Circle by Pat Metheny).

A couple summers ago, I was working in landscaping mowing lawns. I was listening to a new live album from John Mayer. He covered a song called "I don't need no doctor." My goodness, I stopped mowing and stood still with a shocked look on my face. Like "did I seriously just hear what I think I did?"

Anyways, musical moments! Look for them, appreciate them!

And as an anecdote, Thank you SO MUCH to all the musicians who have put on a performance. Thanks for sacrificing other things to be a part of a group that creates music. Thank you for promoting music in school and in other places where we can grow to appreciate and cherish it.