The unawakened heart
I was given the task by a friend of choosing 10 songs that greatly influenced me. I will post one song per day, for 10 consecutive days. Each song draws the picture more clearly, showing what has inspired me or just given me solace.
Today is Sam Cooke.
I heard him sing, in brief snatches, on the radio. I didn’t — and still don’t — listen to radio much. When I’m doing something, I tune out almost all noise, including music. It was the way to survive in a hectic family of six very active mischief-seeking children and parents who are doing their best simply to keep us fed and clothed and housed.
I could not tell you of a specific song from the 50s and 60s that were popular with my friends unless it was The Beach Boys or The Beatles or The Rolling Stones — songs that they listened to, but that I didn’t. Just wasn’t what I heard when I listened for music.
So it was that first lonely wail of Sam Cooke that arrested me on “A Change Is Gonna Come.” It was 1964, and I was nine years old.
But I heard it. And I felt it, even though I cannot tell you what it is I felt, or what words I was thinking when I heard him sing a lament that was also a song of hope.
I was born to a comfortable middle-class white family in a stable middle-class neighborhood with safe middle-class schools and safe middle-class friends. I cannot recall a moment in my life until my 50s where I began to dimly comprehend the realities of those who are not like me. Certainly not at nine years old was I aware.
Still it called to me. Those words from someone I could not comprehend, a story that I could not grasp, an entire existence and meaning I could not peer into, let alone understand.
It was foreign to me, utterly. And yet it reached into me, somewhere.
I understood.
Not because suddenly I was aware of privation and want and loss and exclusion. But simply of a human cry. “See me.”
I had the moments and flashes. I had the questions. I had the images I saw on TV and the photos I saw in the newspapers. I had the unformed wonderment at what I heard in school and church and home compared to what I saw, and it wasn’t something that made sense. It was simply what was.
I lost sight of those questions later. Somewhere I became convinced that fear required a solution of exclusion and indifference.
But in that summer, I was thinking of what it must be like to finally stop running.
A Change Is Gonna Come
Written and performed by Sam Cooke
I was born by the river in a little tent
Oh and just like the river I’ve been running ever since
It’s been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come
Oh, yes it will
It’s been too hard living, but I’m afraid to die
Cause I don’t know what’s up there beyond the sky
It’s been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come
Oh, yes it will
I go to the movie, and I go downtown
Somebody keep telling me “don’t hang around”
It’s been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come
Oh, yes it will
Then I go to my brother, and I say, “brother, help me please”
But he winds up knockin’ me back down on my knees
Lor’, there been times that I thought I couldn’t last for long
But now I think I’m able to carry on
It’s been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come
Oh, yes it will