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Thanks JT


“…I can sing this song, … you can sing this song when I’m gone.”

Accompanied by four voices and his solo guitar, James Taylor closed his show at Starlight Theater with You Can Close Your Eyes, his so-long song.  The milling around ceased.   Those who had headed to the parking lots to beat the traffic stopped.  Even the cicadas seemed to pause.  Quiet reflection engulfed the crowd as though heaven descended and embraced those gathered there for a few short seconds.

“We’re gonna have a good time.  And no one’s gonna take that time away.”

We did have a good time.  At show time the temperature was still tickling the century mark.  Families and friends sang along, clapped (mostly with the beat) and a few hugged as memories were triggered by the melodies.  Everyone held a cold drink and the concession stands offered free ice.  Cold towels draped around some necks and ladies had their skirts hiked high upon their laps.  Sweat dripped and trickled through every crevice of every body as talcum powder turned to paste.

“Well the sun is surely sinking down, but the moon is slowly rising.”

When he sang Carolina In My Mind, his ode to the homesickness he felt even in the midst of the big break that launched his career some forty-four years ago, we all were hoping the sun would speed up it’s sinking down.  But with the familiar strains ringing clear, the antidote to the heat was to travel home – if only in our minds.  Carolina is his home but his song took us all to that place in our memory where happy times and loved ones reside.

“Oh mother and father, sister and brother if it feels nice, don’t think twice… Shower the people you love with love…”

All too often, our bodies feel the rhythm and our ears hear the tune but the words are lost as we’re moved to move.  The words of these songs are the song.  They are the songs of at least two generations and rapidly adding a third.  Music has moved on to heavy metal, rap, hip-hop, new-age as well as evolving genres too new to have names.  But these songs endure because of the words; because JT sings them so you can hear the words.  In that crowd on that blistering Kansas City evening, there were people who in simple gestures showered the people they love with love – just as James told them to do it.

“I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain…sunny days…lonely times…sweet dreams…flying machines in pieces on the ground…”

Everyone has ridden high when things go right.  Everyone suffers through loss and disappointment and loneliness.  The music opens the door.  The words touch each soul in those places everyone has had to go.  These are not sappy simple shallow tunes.  When you listen closely they sound like your voice saying the exact words you would have wanted to say.  They give you another way to walk in the flip-flops or sandals of those you love.

“People can be so cold…they’ll take your soul if you let them…don’t you let them…”

Even in a song that says You’ve Got a Friend, such words rattle the musical mood of loving one another.  But those words could have just as well come from on high.  When you show your friends that they have a friend, you have given them the power to resist the things that lure them astray.  Less artfully, we call this unconditional love.  It is not the love of a faithful dog but the love that helps make your loved ones secure in their own skin.

“…with ten miles behind me and ten thousand more to go…"

When Winnie and I were young and starting out, JT gave us a song for our lives.  We had only begun “with ten miles behind us” and many more to go on roads unknown, unmapped.  But we knew, “There’s a song that they sing when they take to the highway…a song they sing when they take to the sea…maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep...but singing works just fine for me.”  He gave our generation a voice that came from a place where most of us tried to live – somewhere in the acutely aware middle ground of America.

Certainly there are other artists who spoke for the generation and added to our grasp of the world.  Any listing would be incomplete.  But James Taylor has played the songs that touched us, stayed with us and spoke for us when we couldn’t find the words.  His lyrics eerily jump from one event to another as with Belfast to Boston, “…silent children in the ground…time to lay…rifle down.”  Words that could have come from Aurora, Colorado.

“…this old world must still be spinning around…I still love you…so close your eyes; you can close your eyes, it’s all right…I can sing this song, and you can sing this song when I’m gone…It won’t be long before another day…”

--td

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