Magic Strings

Mitch Albom writes in the prolog to his book, "The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto":

I would like to tell you that writing was etched in my stars, that I am doing on these pages what I was always and singularly meant to do.

But that's just partly true.

Music was my first love ...

For whatever reason, in all the books, plays, or screen plays that followed, I never wrote about music. I set novels in amusement parks, tiny northern towns, even ancient Mesopotamia, none of which I have much experience with.

But never music. Not once. It was as if I'd be revisiting a lost love, and the breakup was still too painful. Only the passage of time, and the realisation that, in certain ways, we all belong to bands in our lives -- some of them play music, most of them don't -- led me to the idea of exploring my first love as a bigger story, one that shows how talent blesses and curses, but ultimately brings us together.

Wow. I've barely started reading the book, and I can't get the words from the prolog out of my mind. I've been blessed with music. I've been part of many bands. Some played music and most did not. But the bands that made music for me have been absolutely consequential. High school band. Barbershop choruses. Barbershop quartets. Community theater. These are bands of my past that I have loved.

Mitch Albom speaks of avoiding writing about music, as "I'd be revisiting a lost love." His sentiment of avoidance is absolutely real to me. I don't have the words to write about the musical bands in my life, but I intimately know the avoidance.

I sang with Sound Accord, my barbershop quartet, for thirty years. With age and changed circumstances, we are apart. Do I want to go to a barbershop quartet performance? No. It would be like revisiting a lost love.

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