Simplicity...

        Playing the piano at my parents house when no one is around is a rare and beautiful moment that helps me to find who I am again after so many moments of being battered around by life's complications.  I have always played the same pieces from Kuhlau, Mozart and Beethoven that I have played since I was in middle school to arrest the heaviness of feeling too much too often. It brings me back to an ordered way of feeling.  The arpeggios that run up and down the keyboard with changes to the sharps and flats to bring a new nuance of feeling to the piece takes me away to another place where transported I feel as long as I keep playing I will not drown in my own emotions.. It is my way of running away and letting the music be the landscape with which I can run past and see the beauty of a well ordered mind reaching across the years to bring to me a sense of myself in the order of things.  I have had a strong connection to these men who were as different as the ocean tides and yet they all brought the music which crashed on the shores of society altering it forever and creating in all of us the sense of what it was like to be in their minds.  The genius of poetry in music of that magnitude is always awe inspiring for me.  When I attempt to play the pieces it is not with the thought that I should make it sound good or that I am attempting perfection it is with another sense of myself altogether that I access through the process. From the moment I sit down at the piano seat and remove the cloth cover from the keys I have entered the other realm and my breathing slows and I am navigating my feelings in a well ordered space of creation that I am just interpreting.  The more difficult the better because when I am struggling with the notes and my fingers are faltering to keep up with the pace of the piece I find that I am forgetting why I sat down in the first place.  The things that haunted me an hour ago are gone, swept away with the music like when the wind rushes down a canyon over the grasses making them bend to it's will.  I am just part of something bigger than myself, something bigger than the problems I perceive to be insurmountable.  They fall away from my consciousness and I am free to feel each note in my soul and bring back the order my heart is craving.  The music transports me to the port of my truth where I am just me......quiet solace enters my being and I can breathe and notice the birds singing or the crows cawing and my mind is not being tossed around like a small dingy with the waves of my emotions threatening to take my under and leave me to swim or sink in them.  The music is my life boat that is strong and carries me safely to the quiet shore of my heart where the warmth of the day enters and the ocean becomes calm again and the clouds are now just soft fluffy white pictures of elephants or butterflies that fly as so much innocuous air and water instead of the threatening violence they portended before the music started.  My soul is peace and tranquility as my body is exhausted by the exertion of playing notes in a complicated and never ending succession of finger patterns as the pages are turned with furious and hurried hands.  I must not stop until I am desperate to take a breath and only then will I let my fingers rest and if I feel the absence of feeling and the breathing is only moving in and out in evenness do I allow myself to stop.  The relief that comes with knowing that the voices and the intensity is removed is the most amazing feeling.  Like I am just one person and not many trying to tear me apart.  The music has once again saved my from a fate that I never am quite sure I will be able to recover from.  I am so grateful to these soul's who created the music that takes me so much energy and focus to play that I forget who I am and I become the music instead of being the quiet tortured soul with too many emotions that tries to exist in this place with so many thoughts invading my mind and feelings that are overwhelming at times, the music covers it all and brings a beautiful order to the madness that I know is always there just under the surface waiting for me to forget that I am music and that my soul has a song.  When I have stopped playing the music of these great men I find the song that the keys are beckoning me to play that reflects my soul in that moment.  I am connected again to that part of me that has the ability to maintain order and create the flowing music that is the song of my heart. Sometimes I have let the tears fall as the music comes sometimes the joy is overflowing through the notes I play....but whatever the song it is ordered and melodic and I have these men from 100's of years ago to thank by teaching me that music is the order by which my life runs and flows.  I will always be thankful for the lessons they have taught me about discipline and returning to myself through the effort of playing this instrument. And to the hours of driving to piano lessons and encouragement my mother always gave me to play the piano. And to the spirit who gave me this outlet to allow my soul to speak to those who hear me play. Thank you for the gift of this amazing expression that keeps me grounded. And to my father who always thought I played like a virtuoso even though I was just playing like an average child of 12.  My life would have been much much more difficult without the music to bring me back to my self.  

May the music always flow in all your lives to bring you peace and joy!!

AnnKathleen