remembering to remember

I have felt fragile lately, walking a narrow path between an abyss of sadness and an overly optimistic view of things to come. I woke up in the middle of the night this weekend gripped with fear about my future. After saying a few quick prayers ("help me, help me, help me" - borrowed from Anne Lamott) I put on my headphones and called up End of Amnesia on the iPod. For me, it captures the middle ground perfectly and it gently rocked me back into a place where I could feel the calm inside the storm. See, I've decided that life is a mixing bowl of joy and pain and much of the time, you cannot separate the two. In order to experience the joy, you often first have to experience the pain. It's mixed in there together and if you're going to drink from the cup of life, you have to drink them both (shout out to Henri Nouwen, again). It's common for me to see everything through the lens of my life and I often pull meaning from things that are in no way related to what I'm actually experiencing, but I really feel like M. Ward understands this mixture.

I believe this album was made from a place of inner stillness, or at least that's what I would like to imagine so, don't ruin for me. Ward remembers. He wakes up the slumbering past and recalls the things that have shaped his present and will effect his future. Have you ever sat on the back porch with a cold drink in the heat of the summer and listened to your grandfather tell one story after another, some with no point other than to give voice to memories that are precious to him and to recall feelings that hold great worth? I have. I want you to close your eyes and listen to the title track from End of Amnesia open. Listen to the low hum somewhere in the back of the room. Listen to the piano slowly rise, repeating. Listen to the guitar thumb it's way through your mind, pulling the right notes from your memory. Imagine you're sitting on that back porch and tell me that you don't feel as if you're in a place of great warmth and comfort.

The rest of the album is founded in that warm, comfortable place. Even the unpleasant and painful memories. Ward recalls one scene after another. Feeling the call to leave home on "Color of Water". Fractured recollections of a dark night on "No Half Moon". The confidence of healing on "So Much Water" and the pain of separation and loss on "Bad Dreams". Sober yet hopeful on "Archangel Tale," Ward, with his whispery voice, sings "Come with me and you'll never be the same...come with me, but you must come alone (across the bridge that keeps you from your home)". That's the promise of healing, the joy from the pain.

It's all here, not only in the lyrics but in the music itself, perhaps even more so. It perfectly reflects Ward's emotions. No dramatic rising or falling but steady and calm, paying tribute to old time folk and blues. It reminds me of AM radio, of some small southern town, of things past. He adds an occasional instrumental piece to bridge the memories and each feels like a deep breath, a pause to gather words and feelings necessary to tell the next story. Even the somewhat heavy strumming and aggressive tone on "Silverline" feels appropriate. Remembering stirs up more than happy nostalgia. There is regret too.

I've been letting this album hold me, in the middle of the night and while sitting in traffic. It's been my soundtrack for contentment. The hopeful lyrics of "From a Pirate Radio Sermon, 1989" are a good place to leave you - "Lost won't be lost anymore / hard won't be hard anymore / And I'm waiting for the day when I will finally know surrender / And the weak will not be weak anymore / I'll be waiting like a stranger for a train / for a headlight through the rain / I don't know the day or hour / but I can sense the final power".