There was a 10 year age difference between my brother Michael and me. When I took my first steps he was running bases at Little League, and when my teeth were covered in braces, he had already finished college. While I was worrying about girlhood frivolity, Michael was worrying about serious social issues. Common ground was hard to find between a girl who was interested in Barbie dolls and a teenage boy grappling with discrimination and war.
We couldn’t have been in more different places, that is until we discovered that a shared passion could evaporate the years between us and serve as our connective tissue.
Michael’s assigned seat at the family dinner table was next to mine. That close next to him, I felt his unease. During dinner I told silly stories that hardly drew a nod while the ones he told captured my family’s attention. Growing up in an era where the world was in a slippery social tailspin, left him with a lot to say.
I eventually shied away from sharing the petty account of my day and sat silently as our dinner conversation would become amplified by heated conversation surrounding matters pertaining to the Vietnam and Civil War protests, assassinations of JFK and MLK and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I did not fully grasp the seriousness of what was happening in the world around us, but felt uneasy by the tone at the dinner table.
My brother was living out his youth smack in the middle of this tumultuous time when young people were becoming increasingly aware of social issues. Many of these issues caused people to rally together sparking both peaceful and violent protests. Prolific musicians were churning out music that young people could identify with. “Lyrically, the songs would be about love, oneness, freedom, sexual liberation and literature.” The Evolution of Music: The Music Revolution of the 1960’s, Mani Goodier, Reader’s Digest Music provided an outlet for combustible expression, like a soda bottle that implodes after it has been shaken and quickly opened.
Music was an important vehicle through which social change could begin to occur. Where Michael was concerned, it offered him a place to self express and find relief. His appetite for music was voracious and he would fill up on it every chance he would get.
My curiosity about Michael was piqued by something I felt to be both mysterious and infectious about him. I tracked his movements like a puppy that follows its owner hoping for a treat. Subtle clues of who he was I would find In our shared bathroom in a left behind Playboy magazine, a tube of Clearasil for his pimple pocked face, and an Afro pick. These clues were only a prologue to a much richer story. That story was unfolding behind his bedroom door.
My efforts to get to understand my brother were thwarted when I would meet up with the established boundary he had set between his world and ours which was his closed bedroom door. While I sat outside that door my body would vibrate from the hum of his amplifiers’ base. I desperately wanted to be a part of the energy that I felt even outside of that brown shag carpeted room. I wanted in.
When he would leave for school I impishly tiptoed into his room, studying the album covers of his record collection, running my fingers across the switches on his amplifiers and when I got really brave I would touch the taut wires on his electric guitar. In that room, the air felt different, and all of it felt like guilty pleasures. I was getting to know him without him knowing. I noticed the clues all around me whether on a poster held up by thumbtacks, lyrics on sheet music or from the clothes hanging in his closet. Intrigued, I wanted to know more. What did he find so intoxicating and freeing in there? Sometimes I would get glimpses on the rare occasions when the timing was right. With his eyes closed, the curls in his afro moving side to side I would watch my brother’s cares melt away while he played Jimi Hendrix on his guitar and he would look as if he was transported a million miles away.
Music helped him make sense of a topsy turvy world and gave him something intangible to hold onto. All of a sudden the irrelevant and unrelatable touched something inside of me and he became relevant to me. Michael’s passion and love of music would supply me with an endless source of inspiration and be the catalyst of an all encompassing journey of love between us.
When I finally earned my right to be in his room it is where we found common ground and our age difference seemed to vanish. Michael realized that he fostered my love of music and the unintentional side effect, my deep love for him. When he opened his bedroom door to me he opened up the possibilities for our relationship to flourish. He mentored me, showed me how music could be transformative and used music in every possible way to bridge a decade of years between us. I knew things that kids my age didn’t and that was currency for me. Michael and I played cards to the Moody Blues, sang in unison, “I can’t get no satisfaction,” and I watched him in awe as he would jam out to “Purple Haze.”
The magnitude of what was happening between us, I had little clue about but I felt it in my core. All I wanted was more.
When I got old enough Michael took me to my first live concert, and the last concerts of great artists like Ella Fitzgerald and Leonard Bernstein. He fed me music like a bird brings worms to the babies in its nest. First he gave me albums and 45s, then CDs and cassettes and finally introduced me to ITunes. The changes in music mediums marked the passage of time, and also the evolution of our bond. Over the years his musical tastes would change. As his appreciation of different rhythms and musicians shifted, mine did in unison. Occasionally, I would introduce him to a new musician or a song that I would hope would strike a chord of mutual appreciation.
His approval would further intensify our bond. The age difference melted away like the warmth of spring has a way of melting snow into vivid floral landscapes. The love of it all cemented our love for one another.
We thought it would last forever but at 58 we were blindsided when he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that I couldn’t even pronounce. His prognosis was grim and the doctors told him to, “put your affairs in order,” and we knew then that he didn’t have long to live. His impending death left me with an urgency to grasp for more. I was going to lose my musical mentor, my secret language keeper and a pillar to the foundation of who I was.
Torn apart, watching him fade away month after month, I would ask him for music recommendations, half hoping that if our conversations continued normally we could trick the cancer. With all the strength he could muster he would rally and say, “You gotta check out Madeleine Peroux and Charlie Haydyn.” When I would leave him I would do my homework, trying desperately to connect with the passion he was about to leave behind. My inheritance would be the wealth of music he “turned me onto.”
A month before he died I had a Sonos music system set up at home and when the technician turned on the music I cried. I knew that my brother would never be at home with me again to glance at me across the room while we would tap our feet to the music. When we knew that he had only hours to live, I put my airpods in his ears and fed him with as much music as I could that would transport him now to his final destination.
Now, every song that I hear, I listen for the two of us. This way I know that I will never lose him.
