Musicality

Music is a huge influence in my life. I’ve thought in songs for as long as I can remember. I have songs that I associate with just about everyone in my life and those songs define those people, for me. And there are songs and artists that define me as well. I’ve always been an Ani DiFranco with a large dose of Beastie Boys kind of girl.

My Dad is Creedance Clearwater Revival, hands down.

Laurel is Ingrid Michaelson with a dose of ABBA and a sprinkling of Joan Jett. She’s mostly this amazingly sweet and profound person, who also has amazing glamour and fun, but also a side that is pure, old fashioned punk rock girl. It was one of my very most favorite things about her. How she balanced those three sides of herself. And it was that common punk rock girl we saw in each other that first brought us together. We recognized in each other a need to color outside the lines and we often sounded our rebel yells in unison.

I think perhaps that may very well be one of the things I will miss the most about her. Her absolute acceptance of me as that punk rock girl. Her dedicated affirmation of that in me. Because there are a lot of people, I think, who look at me with my tattoos and pierced nose and funky colored hair and think, “Jeez, she’s having a major mid-life crisis.” But Laurel never once made me feel like any part of me was just a stage. Even when it was. She took me, wholeheartedly, exactly where I was no matter where I was. And that is such a rare thing to find in a person and it was such a gift for me to have it in her.

My Dad had that ability as well. Looking back, I wonder how much of my feared judgment from him came from my own fear and not at all from him. I think my Dad, especially as he got older, woke up every morning completely willing to accept whatever the world presented to him. And that included me and everyone else in his life. Because even though he scoffed at me the first time I ever dyed my hair purple in high school, he smiled at me a couple of years ago when he saw I had gone blue. When I told him I wanted to have a portrait of him tattooed on my left forearm after he died, he smiled to himself like he was glad of the knowledge instead of wondering what the hell I was thinking.

Maybe my Dad had a bit of punk rock in him too.