Whether live or recorded, the right tunes help you maintain balance

We all have a soundtrack to our lives. It’s playing on the radio when we drive down the road. It entertains us as we wait in line at the grocery store. Sometimes it’s the ear worm that gets stuck on a continuous loop in our heads — one that we desperately want to shake. Other times it’s the tune we can’t stop humming because we’re just so in love with the world.

And sometimes, when we’re really lucky, we get to hear our soundtrack live.

This weekend, my soundtrack was really working overtime. It started Saturday afternoon, as I stuck my iPod in the front pocket of my jeans and began clearing out all the dead remnants of last year’s beautiful flower garden. That kind of methodical clearing away of the old to make way for the new always feels very therapeutic, and somehow, as Bjork and Patty Griffin and the Young Dubliners played, it felt even more like a form of meditation.

As I held the dried stalks of last year’s lavender in my gloved hands and cut them back, the scent of lavender oil was as vibrant as the sound of Desi Arnaz reminding me that “You Can in Yucatan.” And the sadness of “The Foggy Dew” accompanied the steady rhythm of my tossing Gaillardia stalks into the bottom of my blue wheelbarrow.

Later that evening, I sat in a corner of the CH2M Hill Alumni Center at Oregon State University, listening to a guitarist play soft Spanish and Mexican tunes — an accompaniment to a celebration of accomplishments by OSU’s Chicano alumni. And as the night drew to a close, I sat with friends in a darkened corner at Bomb’s Away Café, listening to folk rocker Alice Di Micele belt out powerful tunes of love, loss and celebration of the natural world.

“This world is cold and cruel but I’m gonna embrace it …” we sang as we sipped cherry-flavored drinks and swayed to the music. A friend got up, filled with inspiration, and swayed and moved while I sat, equally entranced by the song but content to just let it wash over me.

Walking back home in a light drizzle, we all heard her songs in our heads again, as Alice reminded us softly to celebrate the rain.

Sunday afternoon, I walked quietly into St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in downtown Portland, following the sound of my friend Kate’s voice as she practiced for a recital of 17th and 18th century music. In the midst of the rehearsal, her face lit up as she saw me slip into a front pew and enjoy my own private concert before the real thing began.

Soon, an appreciative audience assembled. My friend, after a quick costume change, reappeared in a silver ball gown along with her fellow singers. I spent two hours letting the lamentations of the “Stabat Mater” and “Jephte” fill my soul with a very different kind of feeling than I’d had the evening before; something holy, but in a different, loftier sort of way.

Two days of sacred music, and I was ready to stop feeling so introspective, so on the long drive home I turned up the Norteno music on the radio and let the sounds of trumpets and Mexican cowboy songs bring me back to earth. Sometimes, our soundtrack becomes too poignant, and we need to shake ourselves out of indulgent reverie, and let our feet touch the ground. But they can still keep dancing.

Theresa Hogue can be reached at theresa.hogue@lee.net or 758-9526.