Henry David Thoreau’s most famous words are being stalked by a lyric doppelganger. Readers of Walden, will recall Thoreau admonishing those who lamely deep-six free will and choose the numb comfort of resignation over the wild abandon deliberate living. Here’s the crescendo: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Ouchy. That line always makes me howl just to prove I still can.

But what of this new shadow? An opening has emerged from the shade of a full stop, a parade of foundling words now follow the progenitor in numerous listings across the internet. Several popular quotation sites offer us this Thoreau: “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

I’d be downright miffed on Thoreau’s behalf (he did die after all in 1862); if something about this mysterious orphan attachment didn’t intrigue me. There’s more to it than even Thoreau’s own notion that some step to the beat of a different drummer. What I hear in this misquote is the suggestion that each of us has a distinct and singular tune that is core to us as individuals. It’s not so much that some can pick up a groovier beat than others, but that every soul has a unique melody line of his or her own. It’s an inner power not an external frequency that needs to be tuned in. Thoreau’s an example of someone who not only dialed in his own song but turned it up to volume eleven for the rest of us. Rock on H.D. T.

I suppose the trick to hitting “play” starts with believing that we each hold a harmony that’s ours alone, then finding the tuning fork that makes its cadence clear. What would that mean for the masses of people out there – both in terms of a sense of self-worth and a respect for the worth of others? To see each representative of our species as unique, that to me is the essence of humanity. We are not all the same. We are each of us: one of a kind. Rock on people.

Will you flash your tuning fork if I show you mine?

I’m most able to hear what makes me tick in the sounds of poetry. Some poems whisper, others roar, but acoustic or electric, they stir something elemental. And I’ll be damned, but they make me wish others could share the same sensation. So, now you know why I end these blogs in a poem each time. But the real point is that we all have something that brings forth from the depths of our beings an unparalleled joy and peace. We may not yet know the meaning of these triggers, but we must recognize them and see that they matter. These are our songs. We have to let them play. A soul that’s silent is lost even before the grave. So, play it. Music is contagious. Let the former Cat Stevens cheer you on: “If you want to sing out, sing out….

The Rain Stick
by Seamus Heaney

Up-end the rain stick and what happens next
Is a music that you never would have known
To listen for. In a cactus stalk

Downpour, sluice-rash, spillage and backwash
Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe
Being played by water, you shake it again lightly

And diminuendo runs through all its scales
Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes
a sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,

Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;
Then glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.
Up-end the stick again. What happens next

Is undiminished for having happened once,
Twice, ten, a thousand time before.
Who care if all the music that transpires

Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?
You are like a rich man entering heaven
Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.