Echoes of the Dreams Gone Bye

Part of my midlife crisis was to learn to begin learning to play the guitar just before I retired from the Army.

After 9/11 what could I do?  As a helicopter pilot with almost 20 years in the Army, go to war, just like everyone else.  So I waited my turn....

And somehow, for some reason, the Army turned me into a civilian/military exercise planner and sent me everywhere.

As an exercise planner stationed in Europe, I helped to plan civilian / military exercises with nations from Iceland to South Africa.

In the middle of that range was some work I did in Northern Africa and the Caucuses.  There I worked with the people and militaries of Tunisia, Morocco and Azerbaijan. 

In Baku, Azerbaijan, my hotel room was about 45 miles from the border of Iran.  It was about 60 miles to the Iranian capital and about 120 miles from the boarder of Iraq.  For the most part, I worked and traveled among the Muslim people of these countries without a machine gun on my back.  I think the experience I got from being there was much different that my of friends who were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan wearing full battle rattle.

Me and two other guys somewhere deep in the Medina of Robat, Morocco, Sept 11th, 2004 (?)

What can I do as a fellow human being on 9/11?  My response was the opposite of many.  I picked up the guitar to learn to play Schubert's version of Ave Maria.  Why Ave Maria?  Well, the song is a tribute to Mary, Mother of Jesus and she (a poor, Jewish, middle eastern woman) is an example to me of someone who had great faith in her God, her son and her beliefs.  She did not lose her faith in spite of a complete meltdown in her world. She saw her only son crucified, tortured to death and still believed in her God, her Son and in herself. Three days later, Jesus rose from the dead and Christianity took shape.

Maybe when I play Ave Maria at Church or even on the corner of a city street, I will somehow drown out the sounds played and replayed of the airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers.  I will drown out the hatred that still resides even in my own mind.  Somehow, maybe in this very humble contribution to the world, I will be replacing something very bad with something good.

Well, four years later and I'm still working on the music.  I've had years of private lessons, summer camps and group guitar classes.  Each day, each 9/11, I get a little closer to creating the music as it should be played....but I'm not there yet.  This year I played at the beginning of Mass with a friend of mine who played the violin.  Lots of people said it sounded great.  Yes, thank you, but it is not good enough yet.  My journey continues.

My guitar teacher (Charlie Hall web site at:  http://www.dayjobmusic.com/charlie.htm ) said to me, "Chris, you will be able to play Ave Maria on September 11th, the question is 'What year?'"

In a moment of pure insanity at the Colorado Roots Camp last summer, (http://www.coloradorootsmusic.com/index.htm) I signed up for a song writing class with the teacher, Penny Nichols.  On the first day of class she said that everybody has at least one song inside them, some people have hundreds.

It took me almost the whole week to come up with my song.  In the end, I was inspired by the pictures of my two Grandfathers and my Father.

All three of these men have passed away and their pictures are right in front of me in the place I practice guitar every morning.   The other inspiration came from refinancing our house.  We got a 4% or 5% interest rate on a 30 mortgage.  That's good, right?  Then I started thinking...."Let's see, I'm almost 50 and I have a 30 year mortgage....on my house....?

"How do I get myself into these messes?"

So there is the song.  It is looking back at almost 50 years of trying to do the right thing and messing up constantly.  What to do?  I almost want to give up. But then I look into the eyes in the pictures of the the three men I greatly admire, each of them now gone.  Each of them carried the message to me, "Start again."  It is like they were saying, "OK, things are messed up, perhaps hopeless, so what?  Start again.  Try to get it right this time around."
I spent most of yesterday recoding that song with a friend of mine, his wife and their son on the piano.  Below is a link to the song.


"Echoes of the Dreams gone bye.....Grandfather says.....'Start again!!'"