Harbor Light: Projection and Conviction
Photo used by permission, John Entwistle - https://www.johnentwistlephotography.com/
I am the youngest of my parents' eleven children. No, that's not a typo. Eleven. My parents, Jack and Clare, were both dyed-in-the-wool Catholic Irish Americans from Jersey City who grew up during the Depression and WWII. They married right out of college in the early fifties, and within a few years they moved to the "Irish Riviera,” also known as the Jersey Shore.
By the time I surprised them with my presence, my mother had already once taken advantage of a C-section delivery. This meant that she could more or less schedule my delivery date. She asked my sister, Patricia, who was about to turn thirteen, if she would be willing to share her birth date with me. Patti graciously agreed, and she and I celebrated fifty birthdays together. It would have been fifty-one, but Patti died on November 22, 2009, her fifty-first birthday, from glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer that was diagnosed only weeks before.
I won't attempt to eulogize my amazing sister here. I could never do justice to that task. She meant too much to too many people, first and foremost her adored husband and two sons. Patti was the person I called if I was ever in trouble. I had to make a few of those calls... I suspect that she was also that person for many others. During her memorial service, someone alluded to the quote from Samuel Johnson, "The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good." In this way, she was immeasurable.
Since this post is about songwriting, though, I'll just say that the song, "Harbor Light,” was my unselfconscious response to the grief I was feeling in the weeks immediately after her passing.
A few weeks after our birthday, I was driving home from a studio session in Asbury Park along Ocean Boulevard, the two-lane road that hugs the northern Monmouth County coastline and is practically a central character in my family's life. Ears fatigued from hours of mastering work, I was driving in silence when the music and most of the words to this song appeared fully formed in my mind. I just let it happen, alternately singing to myself and crying during the thirty minute drive back to Highlands. When I got home, I picked up my guitar, found the right key, and played it through.
I have had music and songs emerge this way before, but never so clearly. I couldn't help but think my sister and I were making some kind of connection because the music seemed to be coming through me. Logically, I have doubts about this, but it happened again when I was recording the song.
I'm not a good banjo player by any definition. When we recorded this song with M Shanghai years ago, the simple banjo roll I composed was originally performed by my talented bandmate, Hilary Hawke. On this new recording, I knew I couldn't replicate her part, but I wanted to add something passable that would maintain the forward momentum of the rhythm. After a long struggle during recording, I unexpectedly had a sense of my sister Patti's presence. Accepting this, I was able to concentrate and get into a flow state, allowing me to cleanly play the passage in a way I had never been able to before. I don't mean to oversell the end result (it's not a complicated part!), but the feeling I had was very much like the first night that the music came to me.
I'm completely ready to accept that this is all just a projection on my part. I have never considered myself a spiritual person, but neither do I claim any interest in disproving others’ beliefs. Growing up, I witnessed what faith allowed my parents to achieve in raising our family, and later I learned that my sister had an extraordinarily deep faith, too.
During the worst of the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal publicity in the early aughts, Patti and I took a rare drive alone together to attend our nephew’s Sacrament of Confirmation as his Godparents. We were commiserating about the reality of it all: the hypocrisy of the abusers (some of whom ministered to our congregation); our pity for the victims; and the shame we felt at being associated with an institution that would systematically enable it to happen. To add insult to injury, our parish priest had recently been arrested for stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the church.
Patti then surprised me by telling me that she would have converted to the Episcopal Church years before, except for the fact that they do not believe in the miracle of transubstantiation. As the only one of us eleven who didn't go to Catholic school, I had to ask her to remind me what transubstantiation meant. During the Prayer of Consecration at Mass, the entire substance of the bread and wine changes into the actual body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, while the physical traits remain entirely unchanged.
I was not sure how to respond. I was so far away from the Catholic Church at that time that it would have been dishonest of me to pretend to share her belief. And being dishonest with my sister was never something I would do. So I just said, “Huh.” And we drove in silence for a little while, but silence didn’t ever last long with Patti. There was always something new and interesting to talk about.
Harbor Light
You were my harbor light
And I know now in your night you see still water
Staring rainbows in the sun
Right behind you I’d run
to see the face of God on the wind and the waves
Beaming into the darkest sky
Tossing diamonds across the sea
You would silently show the way
So I look for you tonight
For I fear that I just might
steer my ship into the rocks in the rain
In a lightning storm
You were torn away from all whom you protected
On this moonless night
With our lives we share the light
you left behind you
And I know that we’re really one
And I know that it’s all forever
But I feel anchored down in pain
When the sun appears
We can see beyond the tears
Thank heaven it keeps on happening that way
I know you’re in heaven
I know that you see heaven
I know you’re in heaven
You knew that this is heaven
