Dear Roger: Memories Of Music

I have been listening to a band that is fairly new to me quite a bit lately and I was trying to figure out why the music made me so damn happy and then the song that I linked to this blog came up in the play list and it hit me, taking me back to late March 1990 and the Persian holiday of Nowruz.
In my early 20's I lived in the Dallas Metroplex and went to the University of Texas, while there and I met and fell head over heels in love with an Iranian research scientist who was not only a Mensa member, he was a gifted musician in both voice and violin and a very popular member of the huge Iranian expat community of both Dallas and Houston. He could hear a song once and play it back perfectly, and he had a vocal range that should have had him singing professionally. We were an odd couple to say the least, but we had a wonderful time attending parties, traveling around Dallas to visit his friends and going to movies where I would describe to him what was going on, because, he was blind, and had been since he was 26. He could tell the difference between light and dark, but that was it, other than that he was blind, but he was fully capable of getting around in all kinds of ways.
The community he belonged to was the predominantly Christian and Zoroastrian and Domi Iranian community. They were viewed with suspicion by the Muslims in the area and my ex-husband tended to want to end him. I kept my relationship with him a secret for quite a while for his safety, but when late March rolled around, I was at his apartment when he got a phone call and it turned out he was being summoned to Houston to perform at a party. This happened to coincide with Spring Break so we decided to make an adventure of it. The people summoning him paid all his expenses and that meant a rental car and hotels for the drive down as well as food for us, so it was a free vacation and little did I know at the time, a life changing event for both of us.
We toured Fredricksburg, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston where we arrived at the gates of a house/mansion? that was amazing. The people who welcomed us in were some of the most kind and gracious people I had ever met and they ended up throwing the most fantastic party I have ever attended. The music, the dancing, the fire jumping, the swords and the alcohol of all kinds along with God knows what else,was amazing. I remember the crowd yelling,"Chief! Chief!" every time he would start singing songs that either made the laugh or cry and he could make that violin alternately break your heart or make it race. I wasn't left out to stand in the corner by myself, the odd person out, I was drug into the middle of it and made to feel part of a large family because everyone there was a refugee and though most of them were richer than God, they knew the feeling of being strangers in a strange place.
That music takes me back to that time. I was in my young 20's a vastly different person than I am now, as many people in their early 20's tend to be. That Nowruz changed me in many ways, and me and my Persian musician went different directions. I think of him often, especially when I see my oldest daughter and I see his smile and dimples.
I think of him often, and that week we spent and Im grateful for musics ability to take me back to that time, it was one of the very happiest times in my life.