“Gold” by Linda Eder
5songpjct: I love the quote you use in the signature of your email….
“Few people can fail to generate a self-healing process when they become genuinely involved in healing others.” ~Theodore Isaac Rubin
Why did you choose It?
Victoria: There are many roads to wellness and recovery, but most of them have a recurring and unifying theme–help others in order to help yourself. Share what you’ve learned, share what you love, and that is how you keep it alive and thriving in your own life. You can’t keep it unless you give it away.
When I want to feel something move deep in my spirit and soul, I listen to “Gold.” Linda Eder has the deepest, richest voice I think I’ve ever heard. This song is about turning a dream as small as a whisper into something as great as a mountain–for just a split second–and the absolute thrill of that. That’s how love starts, you know? It’s an ember that turns into a raging fire if you let it. That can be love for a person, or love for a dream, an idea, a concept, a purpose in your life. I first heard the song when Michelle Kwan skated to it in the post-Olympic era of the late 90’s. It would have been a perfect song if she’d won the gold medal, but she didn’t. Deserving or not, she came away with the silver and the bronze, but not the gold. To put on that gold outfit, to skate to those words, with the world watching and knowing that you ALMOST made it? Man, I don’t know if I could be that brave. The song talks about for just one moment, touching the “gold.” It could be the literal gold medal, but it could also be the dream deferred, the great reciprocation of love, the big win–and it’s all about interpretation as to whether or not we win. We don’t have to cross the finish line first or at all–we just have to do our level best and it counts. It puts me in the mindset of my own life, and how if someone is out there listening, I can help them find and touch that gold for themselves, too.
OUR LAST song with Victoria tomorrow