A love letter to music and memory

...thank you, Judy Collins, for showing up

Judy Collins took the Hoyt Sherman Stage last week, and my son and I were in the audience.

How far back does my ‘relationship’ with Judy Collins go?

I remember moments in the late 1960s when I snuck into the college art department long after curfew, paintbrush in hand, tears streaming down my face amidst the smell of oil paints. I was THERE, being ONE with the experience of feeling utterly alone late at night.

Still, with Judy and other musicians singing about emotions I had not yet experienced at 18 but knew I would. I hoped I would. I feared I would. I wondered if I would.

And, of course, I did.

Isn't it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air...

Looking at love from both sides now….

Walking into Hoyt Sherman Place to hear Judy Collins at this end of the life spectrum evokes entirely different feelings. There probably wasn’t one of us in that incredible theater who didn’t have a bag full of life experiences we were lugging around as we sat to hear a beloved musical documentarian of our lives.

Judy Collins did not disappoint. Oh, we have all aged. Most of us in that crowd are nowhere near as mobile as we were decades ago, nor did we care if she forgot where she was in her monologue between songs or if she reached the notes that would have come easily long ago.

We were there together. Kindred spirits experience life in separate bubbles, contained within fragile shells, floating together into the sky and almost touching.

floating soap bubbles into a night sky

Looking at love from both sides now. It’s love’s illusions, we recall.

At one point, Judy told us how she’d lost her husband of many years in December, and she’s on tour now because we, the audience, are her grief group.

We got it.

---

Judy Collins is one of countless reasons I understood early in life that music is essential to our human experience.

If you have not yet discovered the musicians who are part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, I encourage you to open yourselves to this form of artistry.

Chad Elliott

,

Kathryn Severing Fox

,

Dartanyan L. Brown

,

Jason Walsmith

,

Chip Albright

and

Carol Montag

. Click on each of their names to be transported to another world. You’ll hear their music. Music is a universal form of storytelling that we can celebrate and appreciate.

Love,

Julie