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Write It Down
I mentioned I’m planning music for a funeral. Appurtenant to that, I have a lot of technical and historical musical questions. None will be answered. I will come back to that in a minute.
Example: Kate just played a recording of “Summertime” that is really beautiful. It also sounds to me quite a lot like the vocal quality and style of the deceased. I thought it was of Renee Fleming but the Boatwife said, “no, it is so and so.” Some black singer. Mom was a beautiful fair-skinned, Scotch-English-German blue-eyed blond but she sang just like a black woman, now that I think of it. She loved Ella, we love Ella.
Anyway, I’d like to hear a historical and technical vocal and artistic analysis of this subject. That singer as a voice, and as a historical figure; this interpretation of the song, etc.
But at a certain point late in life, a technical, historical person can have a lot of technical and historical questions like this that can’t be looked up anywhere. The information can only be ascertained by interviewing certain experts. In this case, only one expert: Gigi.
Gigi’s no longer available for questions, as I hope you understand!
Here is the point:
- No doubt, you yourself will soon lose the availability of unique sources of information that is important to you.
- My recommendation is that, as you talk to these loved ones, that you somehow record what they say.
Why?
First, because they will tell you so many interesting things about their lives, and you will say to yourself, “I’ve got to remember that!” but you won’t.
Second, because there are so many things that these people lived through, that are important and that you knew nothing about, not even enough to ask. They just pop up, and you say, “Really? Tell me more.” You forget most of these things too.
Published in General
First of all I hope you’ll forgive me for intruding, may I suggest Going Home.
As played on the pipes in Scotland.
@Mark Camp: This reminds me that I need to write down my funeral arrangements. Husband and son know the basics: most songs and some of the readings. But you’re right that talking to the person and writing things down are so important. Wish you had a recording of Gigi to share with us. God bless and comfort you.
Thanks for this thoughtfulness. I listened just now on the PA turnpike, traveling for the Worship Service tomorrow. I was kind of “goin’ home” myself!
Allow me to second your recommendation to record some history from the elders that will be departing sooner or later. Even the stories that my folks told me multiple times (and boy did they like to tell the same stories again and again) are now pretty fuzzy in my memory or gone altogether. Apparently I was aging too! Anyway, good advice.
…. so I’m sitting at my sister’s bedside. Father John gave her Last rights last night and I’m waiting for our parents to arrive to say their goodbyes. Went through pictures with my niece. So many stories to tell. My sister should have been telling them not me.