Music & Poetry Can Touch Our Soul

"When Someone Like You" from the Broadway musical Jekyll & Hyde

By Linda Sechrist

More than thirty-five years ago, I was sitting in my car in front of my condo in Weymouth, Massachusetts. Just as I was about to turn the ignition and step out, a song came on the radio. From the very first note and lyric, it cast its spell over me. I couldn’t move.

I looked up through the windshield and saw the full moon burning through wisps of cloud, heightening the moment as if the sky itself were participating. To this day, I don’t need to close my eyes to hear that song playing inside my head or to see the moon’s soft glow. The scene—and the feeling—are etched deeply into my body as an unforgettable moment, one in which I knew the Universe was speaking directly to me.

The song was “When Someone Like You” from the Broadway musical Jekyll & Hyde, sung by Linda Eder. At the time, I was involved in the Cursillo movement and scheduled to give a Leadership talk at an upcoming retreat. The retreat committee had never allowed a secular song before. Yet in that instant, I knew—without question—that these lyrics weren’t just for me and should be part of my talk.

That realization meant I had to identify the song and the singer, both unknown to me at the time, and somehow make it part of the retreat. I knew others needed to hear it too.

The voice, the music, and especially the lyrics touched something so deep within me that my heart felt as though it might burst open. I was love-struck—enraptured—and I wept, releasing years of emotions I hadn’t known I was carrying.

It felt as though the Universe itself was singing these words to me about my life through Linda Eder:

I peer through windows

Watch life go by

Dream of tomorrow

And wonder why

The past is holding me

Keeping life at bay

I wander lost in yesterday

But if someone like you

Found someone like me

Then suddenly

Nothing would ever be the same

My heart would take wing

And I'd feel so alive!

If someone like you

Found me!

It was an unearthly LOVE not attached to any person and I hadn’t known or felt before. Today, envisioning that moment can still take me back to when I felt that LOVE and a part of everything in the Universe. Moments like that are impossible to forget. Thankfully, they can be recalled in the present and in seconds raise our frequency. Because LOVE can do that with music and poetry.