My dad came into my room. My shoulders tensed, then he handed me an album. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
“This one is a first edition. I bought it in 1967. You should listen to it.” This was 1976, in Pomona, California. I was 10.
When he left, I put the needle of my Fisher-Price record player on the first track on black vinyl. I heard the most remarkable sounds.
My body leaned toward them. While the first side played, I didn’t move. I flipped
the disc over and leaned in again. And then again.
My world opened to music that day. My dad took a lot from me, but that day he gifted me the Beatles.
How much I came to love them, with a fervent force that has lasted for 46 years? The force of that love is all mine.
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On the rare afternoons, when the fighting didn’t last as long as usual, and the interrogation after dinner was still a while away, my dad would put on music in he living room. My brother and I listened to it all, the sounds filling the space, a safe haven. Cat Stevens, REO Speedwagon, Jethro Tull. The soundtracks from Camelot and Annie, Barry Manilow, and a lot of Peter Paul and Mary. We were more Puff the Magic Dragon than Pink Floyd.
I absorbed it all.
Music became the language of escape for me. A place to go when everything else leered and loomed, my body tensed, waiting for the next fight to begin. In music, I lived in the moment. Especially with headphones.
And when my dad played The White Album, my brother and I clutched Bic pens in our hands and smashed out our rage by drumming in violent joy along to “Why Don’t We Do It In the Road.” Our green naughahyde couch had splatters of blue ink on the back. My mother complained, often. But those Rorschach splatters always reminded me of when I had felt free.
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