Musical Notes

This morning, I was talking with my oldest son (I will not be “naming” my sons or family out of respect for their privacy. I do not feel this same respect for her rapist, Eric, though.). The song Careless Whisper came up, I don’t know why the conversation went in the direction it did, but we were talking about the lyrics, then the singer. George Michael. *BOOM*  The invasion of sounds and images and smells and feelings that last day. The strangeness to me of her very strong reaction to the images in the video for the song Freedom and how low her energy was when she made the half-humorous comment (apologizing for that reaction?).

“I think there's something you should know

I think it's time I stopped the show
There's something deep inside of me
There's someone I forgot to be
Take back your picture in a frame
Don't think that I'll be back again" -Freedom 90,George Michael

Hannah was a talented musician, though the world did not get to see enough of her music. She had her own appetite and tastes in music, but also held some of the songs and musicians that I cherished close to her. Music was a force for creation for her, for putting out a voice that she felt was not being heard and communicating what she felt, especially after she felt not believed by people that she trusted after she was hurt by Eric.  I believe that it often held some ability to reduce the pain inside her when the memories or hurts swept up towards her, until it no longer did.

There are songs that will always hold memories for me:  some sweet, some bittersweet.  When she was in high school, she was enamored with a song called Shut Up and Dance by Walk the Moon. iI has been her calling card in my ear every time I’ve heard it for 7 years.  It makes me smile with tears in my eyes now. It still lifts my spirits as well.  I imagine that in her mind as a 15 year old, it rang as a love song that she could fully dive into, and I can see my sparkling, lively daughter dancing in the family room or kitchen while she helped cook or baked one of her creative baked goodies, singing to Walk the Moon, Neon Trees (Ho He) Owl City, Pink, especially the early music, Mumford and Sons, Imagine Dragons. 

As she got older, Nicki Minaj and Jesse J and the women who sang about spoke up for the rights of women and all people as well as became part of her repertory. Janelle Monae, Lizzo, Princess Nokia, other names that I wish I could remember now were significant inspirations to her music and her intersectional feminist philosophy (an phrase and concept that I had not heard of before her introducing it to me). There seemed to be a supportiveness among females in these online and musical worlds that she was lacking in the physical world.  She would tell me stories of betrayals and unkindness among people who she went to school with, until finally, online she became part of a group that accepted and understood. I don’t know how the group came together, but they were all over the world; Hannah’s passing, the group slowly drifted away.

Over the spring, while the coronavirus encapsulated her into her small, cluttered apartment with the boy who had broken up with her but stayed to sponge, she spent time working on her music, honing her skills through the constant pain in her wrists from tendonitis.  There are a number of different styles and pieces that she experimented with, sharing with her friends and the world on instagram: blues, rock, a little jazz. There is a song that she recorded during this time, but she only publicly put into the world about a minute of it. It is Wild World, by an artist that I grew up knowing as Cat Stevens, who is now known as Yusef Islam.  I have searched for the original video among her recordings, but that scrap of her singing, a little unsure for her, is all I have of it.  The song seems almost intentional, though I would guess it was not. At the time it was just a too-short piece that I was enamored of from a song I love.

“Now that I’ve lost everything to you,

You say you want to start something new, 

It’s breaking my heart, your leaving,

Baby I’m grieving…”-Wild World, Yusef Islam

I have a playlist on youtube of her songs, speeches, art pieces, including this song. I listen to it, try to hold onto the details.

Here is the link to the song: https://youtu.be/FjqhcsYT12Q .