Music

[Christopher Bynum]

MUSIC


I found a note taped to the top of the first box of albums. It read:

Keep your music close. It will bring good things to you.
-Ellis

It reminded me of something Uncle Ellis told me back when I was in college. This was about two months before Mom passed away. She was pretty sick then, and as usual, no one knew how to get in touch with Uncle Ellis. He never seemed to be in any one place for more than a few months. But then one day he just showed up.

I opened the front door to check mom’s mail and there he was, strolling up the walkway in faded bellbottom jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, with a leather backpack that looked like it had been around since the Pony Express slung over one shoulder. He wore the same dreadlocks he’d worn as long as I could remember. The only thing different was that I could see was a few strands of gray interlacing his black braids.

He stepped up onto the porch, shook my hand and grabbed me in a bear hug. “How’s my sister?” he asked. For one of the few times in my memory, Uncle Ellis wasn’t smiling.

I don’t know how he knew. Like I said, nobody knew where he was or how to get in touch with him. But here he was showing up right on time as he always did.

He spent most of the morning up in my mother’s room. After lunch we sat out on the front porch, with me on a patio chair and Uncle Ellis in Mom’s straight-backed rocker. We talked; mostly him asking me how things were in college and him commenting a few times about how proud Mom was of me, and how proud he was of me.

We had a spell were we didn’t say anything at all, and then he asked me, “If you had to associate your favorite memory of a song with your mom, what song would it be, and why?”

I thought about that for a minute, and then answered, Love or Let Me Be Lonely by The Friends of Distinction. I remember her in the kitchen when I was a little kid. She was making cookies, I think, and that song came on the radio. Mom liked that song, and she started dancing and singing along with it as she did her thing with the cookies.” Reliving that memory got me a little choked up. My voice trembled as I added, “That was a good day.”

Uncle Ellis nodded at me. “Yeah, I remember that jam,” he said. He rubbed the stubble on his chin and gazed up at the clouds, and began rocking slowly back and forth.

His eyes had a far away look, as if he was seeing something far beyond those clouds, something in his mind’s eye. He started humming the tune, and a slow smile spread over his face.

I watched my uncle as he lost himself in a place I could never go. His humming turned into singing, and he went through the chorus in a voice barely more than a whisper.

He wasn’t singing for my benefit – he was singing to himself. He wasn’t with me on the porch anymore. The song had taken him somewhere else.

When he was done, still rocking, he muttered a soft, “Yeah.” I could tell that he wasn’t talking to me, but to something inside himself. Then he looked at me and said, “That was a good song, nephew.”

“Yeah, it was,” I said.

He stopped rocking and leaned toward me. “Always remember music,” he said. “Music is the soundtrack of your existence. It provides the bookmarks in the novel of your life. When you’re having good times, always remember the music that was playing. Then in the years to come, whenever you hear those songs, it’ll be like opening up that book to a favorite chapter in your life and reliving that moment all over again. My nephew…my brother, keep your music in your heart and soul. If you do, the precious memories of your life will never leave you. If you keep your music close, good things will come to you.”


**********


Remembering that day on my mother’s front porch, I remember thinking at the time that I thought Uncle Ellis was just talking some of the crazy talk my mom said he did when he was smoking ‘that stuff.’

But today as I opened the boxes of records he’d left me and placed them on the shelves in my apartment it didn’t seem so crazy. Looking at all those old album covers was like looking at old family photographs…like reliving my life. There was so much nostalgia associated with the images; so many memories associated with the songs.

I came across The Fifth Dimension’s Greatest Hits. One of the listed tunes was Aquarius – Let the Sunshine In. I remembered the home video of Uncle Ellis and his hippie friends from back in the day, hamming it up, singing that song for the camera. That memory made me smile. All of a sudden I was very glad that I’d hung on to my old turntable. I fired up my stereo and put the album on.

I sang along with the music as I unpacked the rest of the records and put them up. I had the volume cranked, so at first I didn’t hear the knocking on my apartment door. When I did, I turned the volume down fast. I must have been disturbing one of my neighbors. I went to the door, preparing to offer my apologies.

A twenty-something sister stood on the balcony outside my door. She was cute, but what struck me at first was that her hair was styled in an Afro. Then I noticed that she wore gold hoop earrings, a tank top and faded bellbottom jeans. Who the heck dressed like that these days?

She didn’t look annoyed at all, but greeted me with a smile full of sunshine. I couldn’t help smiling back. There was something about her.

“Hi, she beamed. “I’m Angie. I’m moving in next door, and I heard your music playing – Aquarius. I’m like, ‘Oh my God – who’s playing that?’ I love that song! It’s so classic, you know?”

As I stood in my doorway looking at this angel who seemed to have stepped out of the past I remembered the note left to me by my late Uncle Ellis:

“Keep your music close. It will bring good things to you”

Rest in peace, Uncle Ellis, and thank you.


© 2006/2008
Christopher Bynum
www.christopherbynum.com