it looks like I am going...

Each year, as more of my life falls away, it's easy to slip into melancholy and dwell on all that is lost.

So much of my life is gone forever and yet there are still such vivid memories of laughter, sorrow, cheer and mourning.

Over the years I have heard so much music. I have always loved music in most any shape, any form.

Music is, as I am sure it is to many millions of people, one of the most important parts of life.

During the Holiday Season I think back on all the Christmas music that I have heard and had the pleasure to perform.

There is nothing quite like performing within a really good choral group and singing parts of the Messiah.

And then there are the songs that make you smile, tug at your heart gently and pull you into moods you just can't control.

There are a few songs over the decades that touched me in a way that has stayed with me, changed me. If anything, they have grown to be a part of me and remind me of all that I have done and all that I have left behind...

The first song that reached into me and made me think was John Lennon's So This is Christmas.

It's a wonderful combination of the mood of the holiday and the compassion he had that far too many others hold only for Christ.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN4Uu0OlmTg


Then there was that song that came out in 1984 that I could never forget.

Do They Know it's Christmas...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5cX_ncZLls

That song did so much for me, coming out in the year I found sobriety and peace. I was dead broke and all I had was my music and my books. It was bleak year for me, but I still moved by what these pop stars did for people they did not know. It was one of the hardest times of my life, struggling with the God that intertwined in the AA message. It gave me a way to look at humanity to find my higher power, what was larger than me and yet a part of me...


Then, there is Greg Lakes I Believe in Father Christmas. The combination of yearning and classical music themes that lifts my heart every time I hear it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXCEdrnaFlY

All of these songs have become part of what I am. They changed the way I look at the world ever so slightly but still influence how I define myself today.