I’ve never done it, but I frequently have very vivid dreams about singing with Josh Groban. 

I can’t really explain why, but somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind is an auditorium with an elaborate stage and spectacular acoustics. I go there to sing and it’s usually with Josh Groban. I never sing like a super star, but it’s always perfectly acceptable and sweet and Josh is always perfectly Josh. The audience is always happy and delighted, but more importantly, I am always joyful and content. I feel completely comfortable and at peace. Except for the tingling. I can always, always feel a tingle. I think it must be glee.  

Now, I’m not a groupie or in his fan club. I don’t follow his life or career, I don’t have everything he ever recorded, I’ve never met him. I’ve never even seen him preform live in concert, but I almost did, not once, but twice. 

The first time was five years ago. It was a huge anniversary splurge, two $250.00 tickets for my husband and myself. “Go big or go home”, right? We’ve never paid that kind of money to see anyone before, but my husband knew how much I loved listening to my Groban CDs and singing along, so he bought the tickets thinking it was a “sure thing” that I’d love my present, and he was right. There was only one thing wrong. I had to get well enough to go. 

So what is it about Josh Groban that my soul seems to like so much? Well, first, the obvious, he has a phenomenal voice. Second, he seems like a really decent human being with a gentle, approachable  presence, and third, he has kind eyes. Multi-faceted, engaging, friendly, always expanding and surprisingly funny and delightful. But quite simply, he moves me. He moves me so much that sometimes I listen to him sing the same song repeatedly for hours and sometimes I’ll go months never hearing a single note because he moves too much to listen. It’s not him, it’s me. Music, good music affects me that way. It grabs my heart sometimes and squeezes it so hard I can barely breathe. The tears fall and I am totally spent by the enormity of the arrangement of notes and grasping chords. It’s all too much at times, and yet I never tire of it because it is never enough. With brilliant music, it is never enough. 

Full Stop.

I started writing this many years ago after I had suffered my second traumatic brain injury and before I suffered my third big traumatic brain injury when I fell down the stairs backwards, hitting my head against a steel door and fracturing my back from L1 to the the last of my tailbone fragments.

Not only did I lose the person inside me that was able this kind of emotional intensity, I lost the me that felt this passionate about singing and even the ability to sing. So now, sadly, not only do I not listen to Josh Groban anymore, I rarely listen to any music and especially not operas or symphonies. But here is the weird thing that came out of that death within me; I started to write lyrics and compose music. I started hearing melodies in my head. A line of a chorus or a hook. Someone would say something, seemingly non musical and I would hear it as musical. I’d write down. I started recording my voice ” do-do-do, da-da-da-da-da and the next thing I knew, I had a song. So now, I’m a songwriter. Weird. Very weird. During this time, I didn’t write anything here, nor did I journal or publish. But boy, did I do a lot of thinking about it. So now, suddenly, today, I’m back on my website, finishing drafts like this one. I’m not sure how this this all going to work out, but I’m here to tell you that the brain is a marvelous thing. Never give up on it or yourself. Time does heal all wounds.