My Memoir has a Playlist!

You might think that - as a former professional opera and musical theater singer - I listen to music all day, including while I’m writing. Not the case. When music is playing I listen. I can’t help it. In elevators, the hair salon, the gym, the grocery store. Especially if vocals are involved. A professional hazard, perhaps – especially since I’m teaching voice and piano now – my job is to listen, give feedback, make corrections. My auditory skills have improved to the point that even slightly out of tune music is wince-worthy.

That tendency to get easily distracted is why my go-to playlists while I’m writing have names like Classical Focus, Peaceful Piano and Classical Study Music. Mostly innocuous, soothing pieces that you might hear while blissed out on a massage table.

The story I tell in my memoir Crash: How I Became a Reluctant Caregiver is anything but mellow. After my husband David survives a plane crash but sustains a severe traumatic brain injury I am faced with a dilemma: do I take on the role of full-time caregiver even though our marriage had been in trouble? I’d developed feelings for another man and had two young children to care for. The pressure on me to do what was expected was immense. I faced one hell of a dilemma.

The playlist I’ve assembled to represent Crash would likely qualify for The Most Eclectic Playlists Ever Compiled (if there was such a competition.) Ranging from classical to 2000s pop, Broadway to kids’ music, '70s folk rock to Hawaiian, these oh-so-varied pieces represent a journey through my story.

“L’amour est un oiseau rebelle” (the Habanera) from Carmen by Georges Bizet
Sung by Denyce Graves

Carmen is a pinnacle role for any mezzo-soprano, a role I’ve performed often. It is the perfect marriage of high drama and glorious melody. The Habanera is the first aria Carmen sings when she slinks onstage. “When will I fall in love? Maybe tomorrow, maybe never. But not today, that’s certain.” She is always holding out, always preferring her freedom over any commitment. Throughout history, women have always been expected to be happy with marriage and children, accepting the restrictions inherent in their role without complaint. The character of Carmen is one of the first women in literature (the opera is based on a novel) to rebel against that expectation – considered immoral and scandalous in the late 19th century. My story is akin to a rebellion – a rejection of the role of caregiver.

During a foreshadowing scene – a flight with David when there is a problem with our takeoff, I pray to God that I can live so I can sing Carmen again.

“Here Come those Tears Again” by Jackson Browne

I was a theater kid. In high school in the '70s I was into Rodgers & Hammerstein and Stephen Schwartz, not Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. That being said, I loved the singer-songwriters of that era: Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens, James Taylor, (dare I say it) John Denver. My older brother introduced me to Jackson Browne and I was smitten. (How often did I use a pencil to repair my cassette tape of The Pretender? Often.) Browne’s songs spoke directly to my fragile heart at the time. I vividly remember weeping over some lost love or another while listening to Jackson in my first car, a little blue Fiat Spyder. Now, as I think back on the gallons of tears I shed during the months and years following David’s accident, they speak to me still.

“Get’cha Head in the Game” from High School Musical by Greg & Ray Cham and Drew Seeley
Sung by Zac Efron

My kids, Hannah and Joshie, were seven and eight years old when their dad’s plane crash occurred. High School Musical was wildly popular in 2005, and despite my aversion to most pop music, I willingly let them listen to it. I actually thought it was pretty good quality, both the music and the performances. One particularly gloomy night a few months after the accident, I had a major meltdown. I lost it, sobbing over dirty dishes and Zac Efron’s voice as Troy singing “Get’cha Head in the Game.” Troy was referring to staying focused on his basketball game, unsuccessfully trying to eradicate thoughts of Gabriella and the school musical. Within ninety minutes Troy’s problems would all be resolved. Mine, however, would take years – and I knew it. 

“From Jewish Life B 54:1 – Prayer” by Ernest Bloch

There is something about the sound of a cello. Something visceral. Its depth and smoky resonance seems to emanate directly from the soul, the deepest part of us, the kishkes – far more for me than its higher cousins, the violin and viola. If I were to choose one piece that encompasses the oppression, the sorrow, the suffering of the Jewish people, it is Bloch’s “Prayer.” It isn’t a piece that is traditionally performed on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, but many Cantors (especially in Reform synagogues where music is allowed) will program it. Five months after the plane crash I am sitting on the bima as the cantor during Yom Kippur while the cello laments in the classic minor phrases, seeming to mirror my sadness and pain. I am profoundly aware of the irony of the situation; I have broken one of the ten commandments - Thou shalt not commit adultery. As clergy, a representative of the congregation, I squirm in my hypocrisy, adding to the guilt I’m already drowning in as I move toward my decision about David’s care. 

“Interplanet Janet” from Schoolhouse Rock by Lynn Ahrens

We didn’t laugh much in those days - when we did it was memorable. The kids loved doing theater, so whenever an opportunity for them to perform came up I grabbed it. Joshie begged to do Schoolhouse Rock with a local children’s theater company. At that time he was obsessed with letters, state capitals, and space and the planets – he loved the order, the symmetry. He was thrilled to be cast as Pluto in the number “Interplanet Janet.” A few months earlier, Pluto had been declassified as a planet. Hannah and I laughed ourselves silly watching Joshie onstage, exuberantly holding a sign during the song that stated “Pluto is NOT a dwarf planet!” 

“Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz by Harold Arlen & Yip Harburg
Sung by Israël Kamakawiwoʻole

David was obsessed with Polynesian culture – à la Trader Vic’s. He’d always wanted a “tiki” party, complete with torches, parasol-topped drinks and me in a grass skirt and coconut bra (that last one was never going to happen, I always told him with an eye-roll.) For his forty-sixth birthday, a year after the crash, he finally got his party. “Over the Rainbow” played on a seemingly endless loop that day. Though lighter and more playful than Judy Garland’s rendition, Iz’s version, with its plucky ukulele, is profoundly sad. Try as we might, the other end of the rainbow is utterly unattainable. And the fact that Iz died at age 38 is yet another reminder of life’s fragility.

“The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha by Mitch Leigh & Joe Darion
Sung by Richard Kiley

Have you ever gone to a high school reunion and been asked by almost everyone there about your mother? I have. My mom Judith had the kind of spirited buoyancy one doesn’t forget easily. Dramatic, emotional, generous, funny, pouty – beloved by my siblings and I beyond words. That she survived five years beyond her initial diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is a testament to her fortitude. 

Mom instilled her love of musical theater in all of us, especially in me. She would play original Broadway soundtracks – My Fair Lady, Mame, Fiddler on the Roof – during Saturday chores and sing along at the top of our voices with Julie Andrews, Zero Mostel and Angela Lansbury. She especially adored Richard Kiley as Don Quixote. “The Impossible Dream” has endured as a classic because it speaks directly to that human need for hope in the face of hopelessness. 

To bear the unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star.

As the baritone sang during Mom’s memorial service, I wept. For her, for David, for me.

http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2021/04/rachel_michelbe.html