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Have a musical memory that you’d like to share? Throughout the month we will post listener submitted recollections here and share a few on MPBN’s Facebook page. Send your memory to us at music@mpbn.net.CLICK HERE to hear a musical memory aired on Maine Public Radio and Maine Public ClassicalCLICK HERE to learn more about MPBN’s instrument donation projectOur listeners’ favorite music recollections:

Melissa Kimball, Topsham

I have been a music lover my entire life. The songs that have withstood the test of time to me are songs that could be beautiful poems on their own. When put to music with a silky melody and sung by a superb voice, that is the perfect song. There are many examples of that kind of song, but one shining example is “Suzanne” written by Leonard Cohen sung by Nina Simone.

The images that song conjures for me are scenes from where I grew up on the North Shore of Massachusetts. I picture the catholic saints adorning the fishermen’ yards on the harbor. Porcelain blue and white tea pots and bowls of oranges, lovely gardens and a free-spirited woman dancing around on the lawn in bare feet in summer with feather boas around her neck, Suzanne. It gives me such a deep sense of a pleasant, rooted nostalgia.

Every time Nina hits that part, “He said that all men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them,” I never fail to get “verklempt” with joy and relief. That line validates, to me, the struggle of life and the subsequent knowledge and wisdom we gain as we get through tough times we all experience at one time or another.