When I first heard Wild Is The Wind it caught me completely off-guard. It was a beautiful summer morning in sunny Northern California, I was driving the kids to daycare, and they were in an exceptionally good mood giggling in the backseat. I was feeling inspired after a night out where I met about 30 folks at my new company, a wonderful evening that brought me a lot of energy. And as soon as “Four Women” came on I realized I was listening to something special, a story that cut deep to the marrow and impacted Nina Simone in a profound way.
In that moment I was a vessel on the open sea. And Wild Is The Wind was my captain, helping me navigate a way to shore.
I got quite emotional on that drive, the tears really coming on during “What More Can I Say?” right when I passed the exit to my childhood home. The timing of that moment was poetic in a serendipitous way, a reminder that we are a collection of experiences that stretch back decades to our childhood. Our roots may be underground and out of sight, but they are the anchor that holds us up through the wind and helps to feed our tree when it rains. Uncovering those roots can be difficult and painful at times. But it’s an important exercise.
Simone’s gut-wrenchingly emphatic performance throughout the entirety of Wild Is The Wind is a testament to that. In her own unique way she reminded me of what it is to be human.
Music has a real ability to help us sort through external stimulus and catalog them in a way that helps us interpret those emotions. The great artists over the years have an innate ability to connect with us on a basic primal level through storytelling and a unique perspective. And while we all experience different things and react to situations in vastly different ways, what unites all of us is our shared experience of processing information and finding meaning in it all. It’s easy to convince yourself that it’s only the big moments that shape us, but Wild Is The Wind reminded me that it’s often the mundane and repetitive moments, like driving your kids to school on a sunny morning, that truly shape who you are.
Wild Is The Wind is love, pain, joy, trauma, hope, and heartache in a tidy 39-minute package. It is therapy. And there’s nothing more human than that.
Standout Songs: “Four Women”, “That’s All I Ask”, “What More Can I Say?”, “Lilac Wine”
