If life were a song...

I felt fortunate this weekend to experience several moving moments. Music has a way of transcending place and time. It soars above the monotony of life and gives glimpses of times past or times yet to come depending. Sometimes I take for granted how lucky I am to be able to really "experience" music. I have never been a bystander or an observer. I love, hate, grapple, rejoice, laugh, cry, and feel the music. It is an action, an experience. It is not a sound that moves across my life and passes by without affecting and changing me. Even the music I don't understand or don't appreciate has a way of weaving its way into my moments and entangling itself in my mind and heart.

The recital I saw last night was extraordinary. Not just beautifully sung, but poignantly communicated. Knowing this performer as a musician, a mom, and a friend, I knew the intricacies and challenges that were maneuvered to get the music learned and performed. That only made me appreciate the effort, the beauty, and the performance all the more. As she sang her Ravel pieces, 5 Greek Songs, I had this awareness, this image, this perspective that was new and intriguing. It may just feel that way to me because music has always been such a huge aspect of my life. But, I would like to think that everyone can relate to this, even if they don't know music as an integral part of their life.

I imagine my life being a song. It isn't just the words to the song that would cause me to claim it. It may be a piece that has never been composed. It may not have any words (though that would be extraordinary and highly unlikely). What struck me last night, and again this morning was how each song, each musical piece has some similarities that remind me of how life works. Each piece is a little different. Each has a different path, a different tone, a different length, a different feeling or expression.

Each piece has a landscape that is all its own. Much like the terrain of each of our lives, a song represents highs and lows, chaos and order, rest and movement. Of course a four minute song would seem to not be representative of the vastness of a lifetime of experiences, I saw it as a quick snapshot of life. The key chosen is like our disposition or natural inclinations. Some of us are optimists, some pessimists, some extroverts, some introverts, and some move through all of these inclinations throughout a lifetime. That is just how a piece of music evolves. It doesn't always stay in the same key, it will have moments of major tonalities and then minor tonalities. Sometimes it changes keys and modulates into an entirely different place. (So for my non-musician friends, happy sounding music is in a major key, sad sounding music is in a minor key. When music builds and strengthens and then you start singing just a little bit higher, it's because the key has modulated upward. This mini theory lesson is brought to you by Miss Rosie who loves 3 year olds and generally explains life in their terms. Please know this is not meant to be condescending.)

Sometimes a song is transparent, and the listener only hears one voice. Other times there are multiple notes synchronized together playing simultaneously. Then there are moments of silence when rests build tension through the absence of sound. Tempos (speed) vary, dynamics (volume) increase or decrease, sometimes the meter (the order of beats) changes and everything feels a little disjointed and off. Don't you feel that way about life sometimes? Sometimes we feel alone, unsupported. Then there are the moments when it is totally void of meaning. Life can feel like it's racing by, or it can feel like a season lasts for an indeterminable amount of time. The volume of life can be unsettling if it is too loud or too quiet. But the elements of music are all there. A measure of chaos in the music may represent the years of confusion and lack of understanding.

I wonder if composers feel that way as they are writing their music. They are going measure by measure creating clusters of sound that harmonize a melody and bring meaning to the notes on the page. I wonder if they know what the ending will sound like when they begin. Do they hear the piece in its entirety, or is it revealed measure by measure? Do they hear the dissonance and work feverishly to resolve it as I attempt to do with the moments in my life that are uncomfortable, unorganized and confusing? Or do they hear a the resolution as quickly as they are hearing the dischord and comfort themselves in knowing how it will turn out? I wish that was how it worked in my life. I want to know when the key changes how it will pave it's new melody through my life. I want to know how many measures will be unsettled and when I will end up feeling the comfort of the original key.

However, many pieces move in and out of the original key but never really find it as home. I think that is representative of my life sometimes. I know where I have been, what felt like home. I spend my time trying to find my way back only to realize that is not where I am supposed to be settling. So I strike out again. Music's great complexity is what it is because of the silences surrounding it. We would never recognize its greatness, beauty, dischord, harmony, or anything if it weren't for the silent moments before it begins and after it ends. Those brief moments of excitement that lead into the performers initiation of sound. The audience knows they are about to be privy to a moment in time that exists for them in that space and time. If the sound went on continually without a beginning or an end, we would never know that we were being granted a gift. That moment the music finds its way to its last beat and everyone and everything stops, we recognize the completeness of thought and sound. Whether it is a sound of order or chaos, the moment that silence arrives, we know there is completion of something.

Couldn't my life be like that, like a song. I don't mean to linger on the "end", but rather the creation of moments in between and how they are fully expressed. Not all the notes of a song are equally distributed. Nor are all the moments in our life. We are called to live out the moments with fullness and intention. Though an eighth note is shorter than a quarter note, if the eighth note isn't played, then the music will not sound the same. So are each of the experiences in our life. Whether it is a brief second, an hour, a day, or years, each phrase and letter that builds each sentence deserves to be fully experienced. There are always parts of a song that "feel" better, or sound better than others. There are those places in a song that resonate throughout our bodies and senses. I also can fully relate to the places, the sections in a song that are so uncomfortable, so atonal, so ugly that I close my eyes and just pray for the music to stop or resolve.

I don't know what sounds the song of my life will be filled with. Is it in a major or minor key. Is it all forte (loud) or piano (quiet). Will it sound the same way in my head as it does to the audience or the participants in the work? How many measures of dissonance will go by before the resolution and peace return? How long will the song go on? Clearly I am writing my song measure by measure. I don't hear the ending or even the next pitch that needs to be played. All I know is that right here, right now, my music is...