There’s something about Fado.
Many years ago, on a return trip to my home town of San Francisco, I had dinner with a couple of old friends in Marin County. My friend, Bill, and I had always shared a love of the arts and all things beautiful, especially music. While his wife, Dara, was cooking up something wonderful in the kitchen, Bill asked me to join him in the living room to watch a DVD of his latest musical discovery, knowing it would speak to me. What I saw and heard instantly opened my heart — as all good music does — and tears began to well. There on the screen was Mariza, one of Portugal’s most beloved Fado singers, at an outdoor evening concert in Lisbon. Accompanied by one guitar, she stood alone on a dimly lit stage singing “O Gente da Minha Terra.”
I didn’t need to speak Portuguese to feel the mournful longing of the song, to be instantly transported to my own place of melancholy that I have known since childhood. I learned early on that I am attracted to certain music, arias, art, dance, writing, and movies — those things that take me to a deeper place, that open my heart and mind, and fill me with feeling and the sense of being more fully alive. They all share a particular kind of intensity, honesty, and humanity that not everyone is attracted to. Some are even afraid of it. It’s the realization that real life includes both sadness and richness at the same time. Something in me has always understood this, although it becomes clearer and clearer the older I get. This is what Mariza and Fado awaken in me. I’m sure it’s not a mistake that this lifelong attraction and longing led me to my work as a grief counselor, where I have the privilege of bearing witness to the capacity for courage, wisdom, resiliency and healing that exists in every one of us. I cannot imagine more meaningful work for me.
Lisbon and a live Fado performance are at the top of my short bucket list. Listening to Mariza, I feel the music in my bones, as if I am returning to a place I have always known. I am called by photos of the streets, the terracotta color of the old architecture, and Fado — it feels like home to me.