The Other Side of This Life

When I started writing this blog, I did so for mostly professional reasons - it’s a space for me to put ideas about projects and collaborations around literacies, meaning-making, online learning, and more. It’s one of the nodes of my digital identity. However, I wanted to share a different aspect of my life - one that encourages, shapes, and supports.

We all have them - the guiding lights of our lives that help us find the way out and support us through the tough parts. I’d like to introduce you to a couple of mine - my husband, Dan Caruso, and the strong, most enduring thread that has made up a substantial part of the fabric of our relationship - music.

Dan and I met at SUNY Fredonia as undergrads, where I was a childhood ed/music major and he was a sound recording/percussion major. We played in pep band together for years, and I accompanied him on piano for his senior recital. We started dating soon after that in 2009, and we’ve been partners ever since in so many ways. Beyond being best friends and in love, we just gel together musically. We are a drums-and-bass package deal!

Being musicians for most of our lives, we knew it would figure into our wedding plans as critical. When we decided to get married almost two years ago, having a concert-wedding where we actually performed together was at joke status - we didn’t know it was actually possible to do it. We had read a lot about concert themed weddings (it’s really popular among musicians), about grooms playing songs they wrote for their brides or vice versa, or of having a wedding on a stage of a concert venue, but nowhere did we see anything where the bride and groom performed a set onstage. But because we had a great venue in town that could support such an event - the Riviera Theatre - we were able to actually do it on July 11 of this past year!

After the wedding ceremony, where my mom, sister, and uncle performed “Grow Old With Me” by John Lennon and my aunt performed “Con te Partiro” as performed by Andrea Bocelli, Dan and I performed a 30-minute set of our favorite songs. I wanted to share one of those songs with all of you!

We closed out the set with Dave Brubeck’s iconic “Take Five” off of his album Time Out! We played with our friends Jon Rizzo (keys) and Thom Turner (guitar)… and as you can see, we had a lot of fun doing it.

Music is an integral part of our lives. Our house is full of instruments, our cars are full of CDs, and our home and offices constantly playing music of some sort. Every paper I’ve ever written has a soundtrack, as does every late-night reading session or early morning email-check. It’s almost impossible to separate it from the work that I do every day for school and my grad assistantship.

The same goes for Dan. To work through a doctoral program absolutely requires a support system, and Dan is the crux of this for me. He is a true partner, and I appreciate this with everything in me.

I wanted to share this, and while it might not have to do with the scholarly stuff overtly, the people in our lives (and perhaps even the music around and in us) are nonetheless an important part of the hard work we do every day.