Neil DIamond, Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Me

 

There is a store in Hollywood which some of my children have raved about in the past.  It's called Amoeba Music, and my son BJ/Robert in particular could never say enough good about their extensive collection of regular and hard-to-find LPs and CDs, both new and used.

I happened to be delivering a Christmas gift to an A&A customer in the area and decided to check it out.  It was incredible!  It's all true!  I walked out with five used CDs, one of which was a recording of an LP I had purchased while a missionary in Argentina: the soundtrack of the movie Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

The original music was created by the patron saint of the Davis home, Neil Diamond.  Aunt Silvia Diamond's nephew, a frequent guest in the home in which we now live, conceived of this theme-driven recording in an era (1973) when other pop music artists such as the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Moody Blues, were also making so-called "concept albums."

I anxiously opened it and stuck it in the CD player of my Prius.  I was quickly transported back to 1974.  It felt like one of those reunions with a long lost friend you haven't seen for ages.  And similarly, like a comfortable old friend, the music and the words of the songs came easily to memory, as if we had never been apart.  I easily recognized the flow and the nuances of each song, even after so many years.  I found myself singing along, attempting to imitate the man's voice whose picture hangs in the room on Plainview Avenue in Tujunga where he would sometimes sleep when he came to So Cal from Brooklyn to launch his singing career.

One of the main songs is titled "Be" (an appropriate song title for my life) in which Neil sings about "a painted sky where the clouds are hung for the poet's eye."  He also sings about a "glory looking day" and how you can "behold it if you may."  As I drove, listening to the songs and these words, the brilliant sun was playing hide-and-seek with beautiful banks of puffy white clouds.  I felt one with the entire experience.  I became caught up in the beauty right then of what I was hearing and observing.  I see and hear everything even now, pleasantly, in my mind's eye and ears.

It truly was one of the special moments that grace our lives far too rarely.  Feeling healthy and so greatly blessed, I couldn't and can't help but contentedly smile at my good fortune!