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"Music has charms to soothe a savage breast,
To soften rock, or bend a knotted oak."--William Congreve
"Singing together releases oxytocin, a neurochemical now known to be involved in establishing bonds of trust between people....In a sort of neurochemical dance, music increases our alertness through modulation of norephinephrine and epinephrine and taps into our motor response system through cortisol production, all the while bolstering our immune system through musical modulation of IgA, serotonin, melatonin, dopamine, adrenocorticotropic hormone, and B-endorphins."--Daniel J. Levitin, The World in Six Songs: How The Musical Brain Created Human Nature.
Shortly before post time at the Derby, women in sun hats and frocks and men in derbies and blazers, many with mint juleps in hand, rise to sing "My Old Kentucky Home." I love that moment, almost as much as I love to see a jockey like Calvin Borel lace a two-year-old like Mine That Bird through short-lived gaps in a continuously morphing crowd of horses, dash to the front along the rail, and sew up a victory going away. Setting aside the now inappropriate term "darkies," I love that song with its evocative sense of place and envy those bluegrass natives who sing it with heartfelt conviction. Residing now in the Arizona desert but forever a cool child of the Northwest, eyes watering but not quite dripping at the railbirds' rendition, I wish that there were a Puget Sound song that I could warble with my fellow Sounders in an emotional release of neurochemicals. Where's our "Missouri Waltz," our "Tennessee Waltz," our "Meet Me in St. Louis," our "St. Louis Blues," our "New York, New York," our "Manhattan," our "Cape Cod Bay," our "Chicago," our "Dixie," our "Kansas City," our "Deep in the Heart of Texas," our "Oklahoma," our "California Dreamin'," our "California, Here I Come," our "I Left My Heart in San Francisco?" Touching songs or rousing songs, songs to croon or belt out. Songs rendered by singers of stature like Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Patti Paige, even the Mamas and the Papas. But what have we got, fellow mossbacks and webfooters? "The Bluest Skies You've Ever Seen Are in Seattle?" An insipid tune with a flat-out lie for a first line? The ever affable Perry Como just laughs his way through that one, and who could blame him? What about Stan Boreson's "Hang My Hat in Ballard," Robyn Hitchcock's "Viva, Sea-Tac," "Aurora Bridge" by The Fresh Young Fellows, or "Emerald City" by United State of Electronica, you say? Don't even think of going there.
We mistics need a new song, a blues in a minor key, so Seattle-like, understatedly boasting of the area's indigenous beauty. Its steel-iron-dun-drab-leaden-somber-ashen-grizzled-slate-mouse-pearly-silver gray skies. Its emerald-beryl-aquamarine-olive-pea-apple-sea-bottle-leaf-green chlorophyl-filled viridescence. Its rare glimpses of dawn's lemon light, noon's cerulean blue, dusk's orange glow. Its drizzles, showers, squalls. Its archipelagoes, lakes, beaches, marshes, bogs. Its mountain peaks, glaciers, abrupt shoreside hills. Its firs, hemlocks, pines, cedars, maples, alders, spruces. Its lichen and leafmulch. Its salal, Oregon grape, skunk cabbage, bushes of blueberries and huckleberries sprouting from nurselogs among sprawling vines of blackberries and salmonberries.
Someone compose that tune. Give me a blues sound for that occasionally blue Sound and, pace Perry, full of hopes and full of fears, I'll take a crack at crafting lyrics that, sung among compatriots, will let loose our pent-up oxytocin and obviate our need for OxyContin.
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