"You Haven't Lived Until…"

It was another glorious music session at my beloved Jewish Home for the Aged, where I have played piano and sung every Friday (that I’m in town) since 2008. Seventeen years of playing old jazz standards for folks who heard them on the radio while courting, of playing recognizable classical pieces that found their way into movies and even TV (the Lone Ranger’s William Tell Overture by Rossini, Alfred Hitchcock’s Funeral March for a Marionette by Gound, etc.). Sometimes I’ve brought my guitar and sung old folk songs they may have sung in elementary school—The Erie Canal, Red River Valley, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and so on. 

 

But yesterday, in honor of today’s march, I did something I had never done. I played and we sang protest songs from the 60’s. Things like If I Had a Hammer, Down by the Riverside, We Shall Not Be Moved. They knew the songs and were in the spirit! I got the feeling that this was familiar territory and imagined them as younger protestors. Who knows? But they were singing with great gusto and smiles.

 

I imagine all of us have our own endings to the sentence that begins “You haven’t lived until…” People might say things like:.

… you’ve bungee-jumped or sky-dove.

… you’ve seen the Aurora Borealis in Alaska.

…you’ve hiked to Machu Picchu. 

 

And so on. 

 

My list is often things like:

…you’ve sung Free at Last with 4-year-olds and had a passionate kid sing a solo.

…you’ve sung I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free with elementary-age students. 

…you’ve performed at the Mozarteum in Salzburg with 17 Middle School kids with 800 music teachers from around the world in the audience.

 

And so on.

 

But now I have a new one to add.

… you’ve sung We Shall Overcome with 25 eighty/ninety-year olds and watched Jesse, a beautiful elder black woman, sing with her eyes closed with the most beatific expression on her face. 

 

As often happens with me with the song, I couldn’t sing and weep at the same time. And that was a first— saying goodbye to them (until next Friday) in-between my sobs. I shall hold their image in my mind as I take to the streets today, guitar in hand, hopefully to get the people around me singing. In-between the chants:

 

“What do we want?!!!”

“Neighborhood sings!!!”

“What do we want?!!!”

“ (clap) No kings!!!”

 

PS And speaking of Neighborhood Sings, immediately after the Jewish Home, I gathered with the neighbors who I led in song during the pandemic. Now we meet three or four times a year, the kids who were 3 and 7 now 8 and 12. We sang through our Halloween repertoire and then moved on to the above (and more) protest songs. It was lovely—even better than bungee jumping!