8 Things My Sister Taught Me About Music, Love & Life
JR Rhodes Blog
Music. Love. Life.
8 Things My Sister Taught Me About Music, Love & Life
The thing about music is it won’t leave me alone. I wouldn’t call it stalking or anything like that. It’s more like a longing. Not like unrequited love longing, but more like a beautiful and necessary longing. Sorta like breathing. When my sister, Susan, died in 2000, question mark after question mark rained over me and one of the big questions was “Why am I making music?” And until I could answer that question music would be in the background for me. You might say I kinda held my breath. Flash forward to today years later and even in the background, music still won’t leave me alone and the question “Why am I making music?” I don’t have all the answers for, but I do have some. And for that I have Susan to thank. Simply put, she was a beautiful human being. See, Susan loved life and was a generous soul to family, friends and strangers alike. And she was funny. Susan knew how to have a good time. And she had a laugh. Did she have a laugh. She had a laugh you could hear down the hallway before she even entered the room. I always thought she should’ve been born on my birthday, April Fool’s Day, she was so funny. Instead, my birthday has in a way become a day to remember what my sister taught me on ways to being a better human being, really. Each of them are, in their own way, deep breaths of humanness, clues somehow to what’s brought me back to music. Here are 8 things my sister taught me:
- Laugh – Laugh with your whole body. Surrender to laughter. Tickle sneak attack!
- Celebrate the bigness of small acts. Remember birthdays, favourite things because the love is in the details.
- Love your Mother – She brought you into this world, a pretty impressive act of love.
- Get your groove on – Home alone? Turn up the tunes, sing and dance to your song.
- Get gussied up and strut yourself out on the town just because you can.
- Talk to strangers. Know your neighbors.
- Look for the good in folks.
- Say thank you.
Like I said, the thing about music is it won’t leave me alone and for that I am pretty darn grateful. And I am grateful as well for listeners like you. April 14 – 20 we’re giving away a free music download of ‘Woman of My Dreams’ to celebrate the launch of the new JR website and as thanks. Thank you for lending your ears. For your free music download join us April 14 – 20 at www.JRRecordingCo.com.
Truly,
JR
© 2010 JR Rhodes
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Filed under: JR Rhodes Blog on Music, Love, Life | 4 Comments
Tags: African-American, Artist, Blog, Composer, Download, Female, Healing, Jazz, Life, Love, Music, Musician, Performance, Pop, Recording, Seattle, Singer, Singer-Songwriter, Song, Soul, Soulful, Sound, Uplifting, Woman
This is much sweetness! Congratulations, JR! It’s a beautiful thing.
s.
Thanks, Scott, for lending your ears.
So sorry to hear about susan all these years later, the lessons in your above blog are an inspiration for us all . Paul
Been in the creative cave, writing new songs. So am just now responding to your comment. Thanks, Paul. That means heaps.