Much of the natural world goes on without us knowing, or at least noticing. Our senses function as a hierarchal pyramid. We focus on the world in front of our eyes in company with the sounds and feelings that keep us safe and moving through our days. Especially now in the digital, screen dominant fad of eyes and hands. Feelings are with us too. It’s cold, it’s hot, a sweater, an extra blanket, a hot bath and a cold shower. Touch, texture, pain and pleasure. Feelings are also emotional. Laughter, happiness, hopes, fears and anger.
Lagging behind the hierarchal pyramid of senses is often the sounds of life, or so we might think. A selfie, the constant self awareness these days, we know how we look, good or bad. How many times a day do we look in the mirror just to check? We analyse the image of ourselves to ensure a future correction or confirm a present persona. Yet the sound of our own voice played back to us is a completely foreign experience. “Do I really sound like that?, we ask.
Sound creates great joy and irritations. Like our sense of smell it cannot be seen. Both are peripheral indicators of any given moment. Still, like all of our senses they generate an immediate reaction, warning, calming and confirming. Is the movie scary or is the music scary? Hide your eyes or cover your ears?
Close your eyes, lay down in the woods and feel the forest. You hear this said by naturalists or therapists as a way for us to find our emotional centre. Calming down in an anxious world. It’s harder and easier to do than we might think. What senses do we use that allow us to let go of ourselves and feel the unseen world around us?
Within the sound of The Band are all our senses and feelings.
Garth Hudson was that sound in the musical world of Americana, created by 4 Canadian boys and a fella from Arkansas. The Band, as they named themselves, perhaps somewhat tongue in cheek at first, yet in the end convincingly so. In the hundred years of music, since the dawn of the electronic age, this rag-tag collection of southern Ontario boys somehow wove themselves into the fabric and fusion of music. Soul, gospel, folk, bluegrass, rock-a-billy and blues. The shyness of their eyes belies the exuberance of their sound. Within the sound of The Band are all our senses and feelings. One knows how great a work of art is because every artist wants to emulate it. So was and is, The Band. Music, more than many things, is best when it speaks for itself. So go, and listen, like one might do while laying in the woods and listening to the forest.
What are those sounds, in the proverbial forest for the trees? Yes, first you will hear the voices, the birds singing, Levon, Rick and Richard. Then you will hear the woodpeckers and the animals carrying on with their day in melody and rhythm, Robbie’s percussive guitar, Richard’s soulful piano, Levon’s prescient beat and Rick’s plucking and spacious bass. Then as you really relax and let your most immediate senses fade into the background you hear the sound of the trees in the wind. Trees in the wind, that unseeable sound of nature, is Garth Hudson. The subtle, shimmering organ that would leap suddenly to a thunderous crescendo. A mystical waterfall of keys and reeds flowing in and out of time. The whistling saxophones of the wind through a window.
Some say that a modern Canada was born at Expo 67. Although a certain greatness has always inhabited this land, that greatness was in many ways unknown to us, as Canadians. Since then the faculties and functions of our Canadian industries and institutions means now, there is more of our own greatness known to us, than we can mention and often remember.
In the ho-hum of a summer day in Orillia, on the windy shores of Lake Couchiching one easily overlooks the boyhood spirit of Gordon Lightfoot humming past the Opera House. Lightfoot a Dylan sized presence in the lexicon of song, born just up the road. How wondrous. A Graceland of the Canadian Shield.
Garth Hudson has died at 87, he was the last living member of The Band. Born and raised not far from the southern Ontario childhood homes of his fellow Band members. Hudson, a young musical prodigy of sorts was raised on the Anglican hymn book in the southwestern Ontario tradition. A dynamic and sweeping gospel sound that married so well with his well travelled Canadian band mates and their initial southern American benefactor, The Hawk. Along with Levon Helm a marriage was made between a Canadian kindness and a delta soul. All disciples of Little Richard and the pluralist pulse of the cotton fields. Free at last.
The vast greatness of this Canadian land and the Canadian people is undeniable now. The evidence unparalleled. To be so distracted by the garish nonsense of the moment only purports an intentional willingness to ignore the obvious. The clattering sounds of society and its talentless attention seekers. The fumes, potholes, billboards, and insurrectionists. The gawky ballet of fascists salutes. The willful manipulations that suggests the clouds do not sail past the skyscrapers. That the rivers do not flow past the highways. That the birds do not sing in the screaming. That the trees do not breathe deeply in the wind. Quietly at first, in the background, yet essential in the majesty of creation. A great shadow pointing always to the sun behind us.
It is essential that we find balance between our very real fears and the beauty of our creations. These songs and stories are the gifts that will be the source of our resilience.
Dream easy Garth Hudson. The sound of your music will always make up the memory and moments of our lives.
https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/garth-hudson-founding-member-of-the-band-dead-at-87-he-was-always-all-about/article_983498e8-d7fc-11ef-ac3c-4b6836c7f137.html