True Colors
For years and years, my favorite color was red.
Blood red, as they call it in one of my favorite shows I had the pleasure of seeing recently! You can see it reflected in the heart of the storybook cottage … From my red kitchen curtains and sink to the red poppies splashed across my comforter.
Lately, I’ve noticed another color showing up all around me ... From the pen I use for my daily to do list to a bear I picked up that has become more powerful on my journey than I could’ve imagined, to two works of art that were created for me.
On a road trip last weekend, somehow my soundtrack consisted of one song on repeat: A version of True Colors that so deeply reflects the two souls who created those works of art for me that it takes my breath away.
I have always been something of a musical purist, nearly always preferring the first version of something I encounter over any subsequent versions I may hear.
This song, though, has always been different.
From my first hearing of it years ago, the Phil Collins version moved me in ways Cyndi Lauper’s beautiful version - which I had loved for years - never did.
I am in awe now as I contemplate how it landed in this moment of my journey, and the fact that like everything else that has unfolded for me, my heart knew all those years ago that it carried something special with it.
It happens that I randomly downloaded it a few months ago. I don’t know if I heard on the radio or how it came to mind or crossed my path, but I had not heard it in years, and I randomly bought it one day.
Three days later, I heard a podcast interview with the man I’ve long loved from afar/heart behind one of the beautiful works of art that was created for me.
In this interview, he mentioned that a particular instrument, one I had vaguely heard of but wasn’t at all familiar with, is what the inside of his soul sounds like.
Being the daughter of a musicologist, I feel like my unfamiliarity with this instrument lends it at least something of an obscure quality ... At the very least, it’s one whose name we don’t hear every day, even if we may hear the instrument more than we know.
I went for a walk right after the interview, and the Phil Collins amazingness came up in the shuffle.
Um ... What is that strange sounding instrument I really hadn’t given much thought before this moment?!
God bless Google, as Jonathan Jackson once said!
Oh, look.
It’s that random instrument I learned five minutes ago sounds like the inside of my beloved’s soul.
In this song I randomly downloaded three days ago, that speaks so deeply to the way he walks in this world.
What. On. Earth.
I listened in absolute wonder at the appearance of that sound in this song that so beautifully reflects what he brought to my life ... A mirror in which I could finally see and know and love the truth of everything that lives and breathes inside me.
The very key to love itself.
As I kept listening, something else emerged: The song’s stunning and rich and complex heartbeat.
I’ve really never given much thought to drums, but as I listened to the heartbeat of this song, I was overwhelmed with its beauty, power, and grace. No surprise, given its artist! But I’d never given it a second thought.
Tears flowed as I could suddenly see and feel what the drummer and heart behind the other work of art that was created for me brings to the music of his band. The music that laid the foundation for my entire healing journey.
His heart is the foundation of that foundation.
So, that song my heart loved for so many years now brings with it the two hearts that have been most deeply healing for me.
The hearts of two men who sat down nearly three years apart to create works of art that reflect my heart and journey, and chose the very same central color.
The rosy pink that is now showing up all over my life, replacing the red that used to reign supreme.
These are indeed my true colors.
A few years ago, Jason Isbell released the follow-up to his incredible album Southeastern. In an article about the differences between the two records, I was struck by these words the writer used:
“Healing sounds different than bleeding.“
Indeed.
It looks different as well.
I will never have sufficient words to thank Matthew Perryman Jones and Richard Lee Jackson for seeing my true colors ... Long before I could.