Life has little to do with music and art. But art and music have everything to do with life.
The dimples in a child's closed fist inspire a lullaby; the devil's swish of falling leaves on a gusty November morning prompts a wistful melody in a minor key; trumpets herald an athlete's record-setting victory; the ancient truths of romantic love cue the violins. A fear of death brings on diminished chords played by an organ; the reality of death calls for an angel's harp. We save the bass for walking, and the flutes for new life, new hope, and whimsical stories about eager children with brightly colored buckets of mud and sand. When we laugh, we hear a penny whistle, the trill of a clarinet, a trombone sliding into a note that's not quite what we hoped for. Sorrow is outlined by a bow sweeping across a cello's strings, or maybe an oboe's double-reeded whine, or maybe the muted sound of a bugle played by a soldier with a raised head and a heavy heart.
But what plays in your head when you're just trying to get through the day? When you're fighting the beast? When you're too tired to change out of your Ultimate Pajamas™, when the world seems full of puffy-lipped corporate managers who insist on being too thin and too efficient, when the lady with the clipboard attached to her hip—the one with the exploding breasts and the startled eyes—reminds you that you're running late? What do you listen to when the man has gotten away, the event horizon looks smudged at best, the afterglow has faded, and all you really want to do is drink three liters of wine, eat a block of cheese, and pull the covers over your head?
You listen to music that reminds you that, really, everything will be okay. Okay.
Okay. So what if this same music, the music that brings contentment and sanity into your life, morphed into color and light and shadow? What if the waves of sound flattened onto canvas or a slab of wood? What if, instead of hearing your life played back to you note by note, you watched it spill, tone by tone, into a painting that uses the softest shades of sky and water and earth to define the blurred arc of your existence? What if?
Well then, you might recognize yourself.
This is the magic of Amy's work. She builds an echo into her songs and a mirror into her paintings. Listen or look, it almost doesn't matter, because the paintings sing, and the songs paint pictures. What you see and hear will tell you a little about Amy, but a lot more about your own life's journey.
Amy is my friend. But Amy the friend is no different from Amy the artist. Antennae up, head down, plunging, floating, flowing, halting, silly, or sad—On-off, high-low, fluffed or trampled, needed or needy, admired by many, loved by a lucky few. She lives the way she plays, she plays the way she paints, she paints the way she sees her world. It's a miraculous circle of authenticity and love, and in the center of that circle—look closely, now, and what do you see?
It's you. Your life, in art.
Robin Meloy Goldsby is the author of Piano Girl: A Memoir and Rhythm: A Novel
