Barely two days ago my wife and I brought a new life into this world. Our son Noble Gryphon was born at 7:55pm on March 1st. He was happy and healthy... and beautiful.
Early Monday morning, as my wife and I reeled and continued our new education, Noble and I were sitting in the lovely window seat watching the sun rise on a grey mountain morning. I'm not sure what brought it on, but I suddenly realized the great weight that had been placed on us as parents. Yes, we are tasked with the job of shepherding this new human through the crazy existence that we call life, but in that moment a more focused realization came to me. We have the privilege of introducing him to music.
Now, I know that he has been hearing music inside the womb and we sang to him and I played the guitar while he was baking up in his mama, but this is different. We have this enormous undertaking of making sure that he has heard the beauty of what Paul and John did. We have to make sure that he knows how incredible Stevie's Songs in the Key of Life is. We get to share with him Louis' trumpet, Miles bright sax and how cool Lionel was with that vibraphone. We get to show him what Horner did for Braveheart and how Williams brought Darth Vader into the picture. Beethoven, Mozart, Cash, Stevens, Zeppelin, Elton, Bruce, Nirvana, Shimabokuru, Marvin, Joni, Willie. (Cue sound of record coming to an abrupt stop here.)
Woah... that's a lot of pressure.
I may have jumped in too quickly, but I knew I had to start. There's just so much. Here is Noble's playlist as it began and some of my thinking along the way:
1. God Only Knows Beach Boys
On that early misty morning as I cruised through my music on the phone there was so much weight on the decision. I knew it needed to be a classic and my first thought was that clearly that meant the Beatles, but on my way there I tripped over the boys from Hawthorne, California.
I was eight or nine when I met the Beach Boys on the radio in the back of the family car. Let's Go Surfing Now and Deadman's Curve fit so well into our life in the keys where I was growing up and for christmas that year I was so pleased to receive the best of the Beach Boys cd, as well as an outfit so that I could look like the lads from their cover for Four.
As the song began, I got a little nervous when Bryan's first words said, "I may not always love you..." But then I remembered how right it would be in just a moment. Long as there're stars above you, You'll never need to doubt it, I'll make you so sure about it... God only knows what I'd be without you. And friends you better believe the tears rolled.
It really was a beautiful moment.
The words filled my head and I sang along and Noble nuzzled in and that was track one on Noble's playlist.
I write this from our bed with Noble and his mama peacefully sleeping next to me. (I just turned the brightness way down on the the monitor.) It is 2:59am. I plan to share more of his playlist regularly and I hope that you my friends will help with this grand task. Please send some ideas about songs that should be on his playlist and maybe just a bit about why they're so important to you. I won't make any promises about whether they'll make the cut, but I have no doubt that at this moment I'm forgetting some incredible artist who's blown my mind.
Cheers.
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