Losses & Love

Recently the Muse has made her presence known through sudden losses, in spaces that somehow love fills again.

Musician JD Souther passed one week ago today. Oh, how I love his voice, especially on his CD Natural History. Here’s an excerpt from a 2011 NPR interview:

Melissa Block: J.D. Souther collaborated on many of The Eagles’ hits as part of a thriving country rock scene in Southern California in the ’70s. Souther has jazz in his background – his father was a big-band crooner – and this CD, titled “Natural History,” does have a stripped-down jazz feel. These are all songs J.D. Souther wrote, many of which became classics for other artists. Now, he’s gone back and reclaimed them.

JD Souther: It all turned out to be this nice, moody – I don’t know – if it was a movie, you’d call it film noir, probably. You know, it’s all sort of smoky and rainy.

Steve and I attended JD’s concert at the City Winery in St. Louis last September. So glad we were there. Like JD, the Irish know now to observe a feeling:

“In Irish when you talk about an emotion, you don’t say, ‘I am sad.’ You’d say, ‘Sadness is on me – Ta’ Bron Orm.’ I love that because there’s an implication of not identifying yourself with the emotion fully. I am not sad, it’s just that sadness is on me for a while. Something else will be on me another time, and that’s a good thing to recognize.” – Pádraig Ó Tuama, poet and theologian