An
arpeggio is a type of broken chord. In sports, when something
goes awry, the term broken play is used. If taken literally, it seems
like there is a whole lot to mend in the world of sports and music. But
in both of those meanings, nothing actually needs to be fixed. Unlike in
real life when there are times in which you have to pick yourself up, dust
yourself off and get back in the game or on stage.
In
my house, my boys do not discuss being famous musicians all too often.
Instead, their dreams tend to involve playing on fields and courts. And
with the tenacity that they compete in physical activities, injuries are almost
guaranteed to happen. No matter how much I try to protect them, at the
end of the day there is only so much I can control. After a roller
coaster period of my younger son experiencing pain in his wrist, the pain
subsiding and then re-appearing I found myself getting antsy as we waited
for the diagnosis from the doctor.
And
since I always have a soundtrack playing as my life unfolds, it was
particularly appropriate as I was driving around Pittsburgh waiting to hear if
my son’s arm was broken that the radio gods were smirking at me. First
there was Sublime’s song “Santeria” with “I feel the break, feel the break, feel the break and I got to live it
out, oh yeah”. Then there was “Broken Bones and Pocket Change” by the St. Paul & The Broken Bones being played. I did not need a
slow jam at that moment in time! It seemed that wherever I turned there
was a reference to things breaking.
It
became extremely hard to concentrate as images popped in and out of my
head. There was Pete Townsend breaking his Rickenbacker guitar on
stage in the mid-1960s. The over-worked and under-paid 2006 tour manager
for the Avett Brothers fixing all of the band member’s broken strings. Or
while on tour with a band, witnessing smoke coming from the Mixing Console.
But
with the official word of a “buckle fracture”, I thought of how it could certainly
have been worse. Delaying guitar lessons for another month and
sitting out a few basketball games does not compare to hardships being
experienced on a daily basis by other less fortunate people. Easy for me
to say, but I would not trade in the few weeks of discomfort in an itchy cast
for most other things in the world that are broken. As David Byrne sings
in his 2014 song “Broken Things”,
“See how easy things can break / If it’s
crooked / make it straight” or as my IT friends often ask, did you turn it off,
and then back on?
Thanks
for reading!
