Lyrical Counseling and Lyrical Results of Coaching

Counseling and coaching are two different methods that a counselor used to guide a client toward increased self-awareness. The counselor listens and gradually directs the conversation toward new understanding. A coach offers open questions meant to prompt self-discovery by consideration of the answers.

Returning from India to live in America in May 2021, I found it to be a foreign culture for which I needed to make strong adjustments. I became both my counselor and my coach, as I was certified in each discipline.

National Public Radio (NPR) had been an important part of my earlier life, and now back in America, when in the kitchen I returned to listening. As I washed the dishes one morning, I also casually listened to an interview of a musician, finding it mildly interesting. I noted that he was about to play a song on the piano—serendipity, for Dave Frishberg,* the well-known American jazz pianist, composer, and lyricist, was about to capture my heart. His lyrics told a story, and within seconds, almost in disbelief, I said aloud, "I could memorize his songs." On the following day my daughter put his Classics album on my iPhone. Wearing headphones, I sing "Dodger Blue," naming all the baseball players. But my favorite is the romantic lyrical counseling of "Our Love Rolls On!*

                                                            Our Love Rolls On

                        The skies grow dark and the winds do blow

                        and counting on tomorrow is at best touch and go

                        but our love rolls on, our love rolls on.

                        You and I have a reason to try, we'll make it over the hill.

                        We survive and our love is alive cause our love grows

                        stronger still, and it always will.

                        So, it's rain or shine, as the Fates decide, even though
                        some trouble comes along for the ride, still our love rolls

                        on.

                        We can rise above it cause our love rolls on, and on, and

                        on.*

Another of his songs caught my fancy for its very difference. Across more than one generation, I was drawn to the assured voice of the extroverted young man in "I'm Hip." As he tells us about his life, I imagine his words as answers to a coach's open questions. In some way, those answers had reached Dave Frishberg, who shared them as a lyrical best-seller.

                                                            I'm Hip

See, I'm hip. I'm no square.
I'm alert, I'm awake, I'm aware.
I am always on the scene.
Makin' the rounds, diggin' the sounds.

Every Saturday night
With my suit buttoned tight and my suedes on
I'm gettin' my kicks
diggin' arty French flicks with my shades on.

I'm too much. I'm a gas.
I am anything but middle class.
Like, dig! I'm in step.
When it was hip to be hep ...*

My realization is, "Counseling by lyrics may comfort us, while lyrics drawn from coaching let us into another's life. Both may invite an exploration of ourselves." 

* “Long known as one of the outstanding jazz pianists, Dave Frishberg has, since the early 1980s, established himself as an internationally recognized composer and lyricist as well as a solo performer with a loyal following in both jazz and cabaret circles. Four of his albums have won Grammy nominations for best jazz vocal.” https://www.davefrishberg.net/long_bio.php

* Classics by Dave Frishberg: https://sonichits.com/video/Rebecca_Kilgore_&_Dave_Frishberg/Our_Love_Rolls_On?track=1.  https://lyricspond.com/artist-dave-frishberg/lyrics-im-hip.

Hope

In the morning, as soon as I wake, I roll to the wide east window, grasp the sheer navy curtain, and open it a crack. I hope for sun. Or, at least, patches of blue among the clouds! This morning I lie back with a smile. 

There is an Emily Dickinson poem that I know about hope, and it has stayed with me because she chose to use a bird as metaphor.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale –

is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the

little Bird

That kept so many warm –

I've heard it in the chillest

land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet – never – in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of me. *

I attribute this singular memory to the year my dad affixed a birdfeeder to the north window of my bedroom. I was in the seventh grade. Through high school, I sat beside the window, at the old-fashioned desk, doing homework for hours—and birdwatching.

A re-reading of the full poem has given me a new way to think about hope, though. Dickinson sees the source of hope as a part of our individual soul that leaves the Oversoul and enters a womb at the time of our physical birth.  

Lastly, this quote by Meher Baba* that, since learned, has guided me through every change of my life—always with hope!

                        It is infinitely better to hope for the best than to fear the worst.*                  

My realization is, "There is the learning in life that comes explicitly. Then, there is the learning that comes from a leap—that stops at different times of our lives—to bring seemingly disparate moments together in new understanding."

* The poem may be found at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314.

* Meher Baba is referred to as the God-Man whose soul had come in previous incarnations and eras as Zoroaster, Ram, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammed, and this time as Meher Baba.

* https://www.avatarmeherbaba.org/erics/literacy.html. para 6.

Bright and Cheerful!

Memories of Christmas in New England are from my childhood, when my younger sister and I went with our dad to choose a tree. We'd walk along a row of pine, fir, and spruce trees leaning against a pole until he saw one where its size matched the height of the living room ceiling, plus his pocketbook. Pulling it upright, he'd check the length of the branches and if they made graduated end tips down to the base. By the time my fingers were cold and curled inside my mittens, our dad had handed over the five dollars and was tying the family's fir tree to the roof of the car.

Twenty-six years later, on Christmas morning, our twelve-year-old daughter was excited by her first pair of skis, as our curious five-year-old daughter explored the rooms in the large doll house, with its hand-carved wooden floor boards, that her dad had built. There were the years of roast turkey on a platter at Christmas, shared on our dining room table—then the years of change crept forward, until our family was separated. Our daughters took in these years... and in time put their own imprint on lasting marriages that have given me three grandsons and a granddaughter. As I learn of what their generation is doing, I am inspired... I share in their Christmases as my daughters' photos of their families—and their trees—arrive in WhatsApp.

I now live in an apartment complex for seniors that faces a boulevard where traffic is moderate. Across is the three-story former school building under redesign. On my first Christmas here, I set off with a small knife to clip two branches of bunched red berries on a bush I had noticed in front of the now-vacant building. Returning on the bush-lined walk to my apartment steps, I cut three stems of slender, pointed green leaves from a tall bush growing nearby and climbed up the eight steps. Finding a single unneeded white shoelace, I wrapped and tied the bright and cheerful berried branches and strung them on the bare screen door.

My realization is, "Choosing certain moments to remember at Christmas time can bypass a second or two of wistfulness that may appear, bringing instead the quiet and simple contentment that can be found in aging when doing what is possible."