Amazing Grace – Part 2

 

Victor Hugo said “Music expresses that which can not be put into words and that which can not remain silent.”   I have a variation of the song Amazing Grace and at times it is unrecognizable because of the seemingly random, chaotic noise of musical notes colliding with each other, sounding like the musical equivalent of an explosion.  The variation starts off regularly enough and slowly builds like a storm rolling in.   It crescendos and then goes quiet, like the eye of a hurricane, providing a brief moment that allows you to remember what life can be like when the sun still shines, eerily in its calmness,  then the song explodes again  like the storm that comes crashing down with torrents of rain, wind, and flying debris, flooding everything around it.  The music seems random, disjointed, almost violent, but yet never loses the undercurrent that commands you to remember the unequivocal power of God’s grace.

“Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come;  Tis’ Grace that brought me safe thus far and Grace will lead me home.”

Yesterday, as I entered my car and turned it on, the song began to play on my radio and I realized it put to music the thoughts, emotions, and psychological journey I had just experienced in my 90 minute therapy session.   Emotions and insights that seemed completely unrelated, so intense that they consumed and forced me to mentally thrash about.  Every emotion collided.  Each tossed me about like a small boat lost at sea in a violent storm.  All were drowned out by the thunder of my pounding heart.  Some how these complicated feelings are connected in the same way that those random notes were contained within that song.   Some how everything is still part of the same composition, even if I can’t make sense of it it in this moment.

I concede that today the storm clouds linger and the winds have not yet receded.  I must walk in faith and not by sight for a darkness broods over me.

Song 4

Have you ever heard a song that touched you, that somehow pierced your heart?  It could be the lyrics, the tune or melody, but it some how moved you and made you feel intense emotions, perhaps by surprise.  Sometimes we hear music at moments and it gets triggered in our implicit memory, and like riding a bike that once is learned you never forget it, no matter how long the intervals between actually riding are, the emotions of the music stay with you forever.  I have had that experience on occasion,  but yesterday I listened to one and it felt as if I was touching someone else’s mind because of the vivid images that transcended onto me and  because of the beauty and the clarity that these images contained moved me so intensely that my body could not contain it so it overflowed and spilled out of me, one tear at a time.

I do not know the name of this song and perhaps that’s best for now because it is likely that what the song brought to me was different than what the composer meant, but is that not the beauty of music and of art?  That even though it’s origination came through inspiration that was not our own, it creates something meaningful for us that we can then posses.

It was a beautiful duet of a piano and cello and  since you can not listen to this song allow me to describe the story that it sang to me. It begins with the piano, slow and soft and mid way through is joined by the cello whose forlorn reservation gradually gives way into free and flowing song.

Begin by imagining you are in a theater, perhaps the balcony, watching a contemporary ballet.  The large red velvet curtains slowly open to  a blacken stage.  A spot light gradually starts to grow and faintly illuminates the stage where a young woman in a simple white leotard with a flowing skirt sits on the ground, knees together, slightly bent to her side.  She seems forlorn and deeply sad, staring down towards her feet, not looking out in the world where she sits, but reflecting deeply inward, feeling so alone.  Then across the stage another light turns on, this time all at  once and there stands a man almost naked, with just white lycra pants adorning him from mid-calf to his waist. (Music starts)

He sees her and he tilts his head in thought and curiosity for the thing that strikes him is her beauty and her pain.  He asks himself what could have happened to cause her so much hurt and feels an intense passion, love, and desire to heal her.  He is afraid that she will shudder or reject his gentle touch, so he approaches slowly, in a timid way.  His movements are light and airy, full of joy and of love, and he flutters as he dances, like a butterfly. Before he tries to touch or approach her he dances all around, pausing on her left, bowing gently and reaching out his hand.

She does not see him for her grief is great, she sits silently, tears running down her face.

He is not dissuaded and starts again, dancing around her.  As he flutters and tries to bring her joy and  happiness to lift her melancholy, flower petals start to float slowly down upon the stage, like a gentle snow fall.  He picks up flowers to create a simple bouquet that he will offer her.  Again he approaches and holds out her gift, and while this time she turns her head and she looks at him, her sorrow is so great that she can not stir her soul, a tear gently falls and she looks away.

He is not dissuaded for in that look she gave, he saw her splendid beauty and loves her all the more.  He places the fragrant flowers gracefully at her side and he begins to dance, smiling, pirouetting around  her.   His movements sing to her “Come dance with me, life is beautiful”  again and again he says the same thing, “Just dance with me, come dance with me, life is beautiful”  and he stops again, reaching his hand for her.

And he hears her voice answer him, deep, slow and sad “No…I  can’t”

He says again, gently, in a tender nurturing way again “Come dance with me, life is beautiful, there is so much to see and lots to love…come dance with me…” As he twirls around her

“No…I can’t….No I can’t” she rhythmically says.

But as he dances and she resists, she fails to realize that he is pulling her into his world and out of her despair.  He grasps her hand and pulls her up, standing on her feet.  “Come dance with me, life is great”

“No….I can’t…” Her refusals rhythmically, low and long.

Her hand in his, he leads her and she floats gently with him across the stage.  When they reach the back they stop and turn, and she pirouettes in is arms and she see’s the distance that she’s traveled without realizing it.

“Come dance with me”

“I can’t”

They float across the stage.

“Come dance with me…”

“I…can’t”

He says “but you are dancing with me”

She joins him briefly, free of her pain, her beauty flowing from her, a smile on her face, free from her shackles of pain and misery, in harmony they dance together until the music slowly fades.

 

Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace

Do you know why Amazing Grace was written?  It is a story worth knowing if you do not.

I Simply Played

What is it about emotional pain that in the midst of it we think that it can kill us? Have you ever had an ache that hurt you that bad?  Maybe it was because of a heart break, death or other loss, or maybe it was because a person wronged you.  Or maybe it is because we’re disappointed in our self. Or maybe you have had to stand helplessly by and watch a loved one suffer.  Helpless is the key word…how helpless we can be.  Sometimes you can do simply nothing, not even comfort them, all you can do is sit in silence and hope the moments pass.

What do you do when every moment feels like a small torture?  How do you keep yourself from losing your mind?  Do you run on the treadmill with your ipod blaring a song that makes you happy, or angry, or sad or one that makes you cry?  Do you play an instrument and lament along with them.  Do  you snuggle with your cat or kids or dog?  Or do you just sit and feel the excruciating pain? I played my violin tonight until my fingers ached, letting the vibrations of the tones resonate with me, playing a favorite song that I’ve not played since last fall, because I thought that I couldn’t do it justice, that I thought I was not worthy to play.  But tonight a damn broke loose and I simply played…again and again it poured out of me, the music released this deepening pain and intermingled with my tears.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYlm0aSQ6pA&feature=related

Music

Have you ever spent time seeking a universal truth?  Something to believe in, something so solid and so true that it could never be disputed?  Something to cling too when the storms of life wage war? I thought that I would find some concrete belief or piece of knowledge but think differently today.  I think that if it exists it is music. I once heard the statement, that music creates any mood whether you laugh or cry with it.

There is a chapter in Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, authored by Oliver Sacks that explores “Music, Madness, and Melancholia,” so I read from it tonight. He tells the story of John Stuart Mill, a brilliant philospher and politial economist who entered a state of melancholia so intense that nothing could stir him, except for music.  And then he retells vignettes of his own grief and despair, and episodes of melancholia suffered by a host of others, grieving losses from death and other terrors and he states that “music can pierce the heart directly, it needs no meditation.”  He recalls a story of a young man in his thirties who found solace and comfort from playing the piano, not just listening to it, but  through playing he could control of the music and thus control his angst.

Music has a way of touching us so deeply and when you truly create the music of your heart you feel the vibration of each note reverberate with in you…and perhaps music is the universal truth I’ve sought, the thing that can heal my hurts that run so deep words can not reach them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I94as8apdc