The Sound of Letting Go Quotes

“Thank God there are places
with sounds that make me cry
from beauty,
not from pain.”
― Stasia Ward Kehoe, The Sound of Letting Go

“Life is a big story. Music is just one way to tell it, to realize how many tales all kinds of people share.”
― Stasia Ward Kehoe, The Sound of Letting Go

“Maybe he, like me,
is engaged in the kind of unspoken rebellion
you don't want to perform too brightly
since you're never certain
anyone in your family will notice
your darkened eyes, skeleton shoes, tousled hair,
patchy attendance record.
You may be sacrificing body and soul
on a ghostly battlefield, fighting across a divide
seen by no one
but you.”
― Stasia Ward Kehoe, The Sound of Letting Go

“I play the music of Steven
for Steven;
ragged, helpless,
it owns me, enveloping me
with an incomprehensible love -”
― Stasia Ward Kehoe, The Sound of Letting Go

“The tips of my overgrown bangs
dip into the wet of my tears.
My fingers, forehead, moisten with sweat.
I fight the slipperiness, press the valves firmly,
play the love, the hate,
the misery, the hope,
the freedom that I wanted, never wanted, can't have;
that doesn't exist.”
― Stasia Ward Kehoe, The Sound of Letting Go

“Let's give our slave a big dream. A big future.”
― Stasia Ward Kehoe, The Sound of Letting Go

“I've a long time trying to love
a brother whose only way of touching me is pain.
A long time escaping into music.
Practice, lessons, rehearsals that protect me
from the hurting parts of life.
I've been winning awards, applause,
acclaim for my trumpets since I was in grade school.

But love?
The word catches in my throat.
Do I love anything?
Have i forgotten how?”
― Stasia Ward Kehoe, The Sound of Letting Go

“There are more guys than girls in jazz.
Next-to-no lady trumpeters
(oh, there are a few)
but it doesn't matter because, for me, jazz trumpet is all about one guy
Miles Davis.
He made this famous album in 1959
called Kind of Blue
which is kind of, always,
how I feel.

That album gets into your bones
goes and goes
starts, hesitates, reaches out, feels
for the music, the sound, the thing you want to change.
Always grasping for the unattainable makes you
kind of excited,
kind of sorry.”
― Stasia Ward Kehoe, The Sound of Letting Go

“I calculate the breadth of Steven's shoulders, now wider than mine;
watch him tear open the Blokus game he likes to play with me after school;
count the hours between now and Dad coming home to take over

and I am only a little afraid
of the night.”
― Stasia Ward Kehoe, The Sound of Letting Go

“It's the start of something loud and soft,
classic jazz and wordless love song,
free and entangled:
forgiving yourself for being human,
for the things you want to grab hold of, own
and giving yourself permission
when you need
to let go.”
― Stasia Ward Kehoe, The Sound of Letting Go

“The dusty library air is electric with secrets/ almost palpable in the thick quiet that bounces between/ Cal and those books and me”
― Stasia Ward Kehoe, The Sound of Letting Go