We were recently surprised to learn that there is a Grammy Award for Best Album Notes (one of the categories that does not make the primetime slot on the televised awards show!) Not only is there a Grammy in this category, but a little research showed us that there are also multiple websites devoted to faithfully recording the liner notes included on albums and CDs.
We started thinking about this topic because of a conversation with our sister-in-law, Terri, about how difficult it used to be to learn the lyrics to a song. Before Google, you would have to listen carefully, rely on someone with a better ear, or buy the LP, cassette tape, or CD and hope that the artist had been thoughtful enough to include the lyrics to each song. If you were lucky, you would also get some interesting stories about the song's composition or meaning. These days, the tradition continues. Sometimes, liner notes only include credits for a song; sometimes, there are images, lyrics, or exposition.
That led us to the following thought experiment: what would we include in our personal liner notes? If our lives were songs, what would be written there for acknowledgments, lyrics, the meaning behind it all, the reasons that we are as we are, the hope that we have for what we will be?
Some lines from the poet Rumi express the same concept:
This body, your life, is a letter
to the king of the universe.
Go to a private place and open it and read to see if
the words are right. If they
aren't, start another! . . . This is the most courageous work.
Open to the title page. Is what it says there the same as what you
have said it says?
Until we can devote time to the rabbit hole of looking up the best album notes of the past several decades (which we hope to do soon), we will make some time to think about our own. For example, if we were to make liner notes today, we could include the picture below from another recent performance where we met this beautiful group of people.
We hope to hear about your favorite liner notes some day!
with love and light and warmth ~ Vicki and Dean
