The Glorious Sounds of the Many-Tongued Mimic

                                                                                           
A major proposition of this music lover's blog is that witnessing music performed live, in person, is far superior to experiencing music in any other way.  But who has the time or means to go to the symphony or a club every day to satisfy their need for a live musical experience?

If one lives in Northern California, one could be fortunate enough to have an alternative in the spring.  That is, if a Northern Mockingbird, Mimus polyglottos, decides to take up residence in one's neighborhood.  Mimus polyglottos means "many-tongued mimic," a name given this bird because of its wonderful ability to mimic the sound of many other species of birds, as well as neighborhood cats, dogs, car alarms, rusty swinging gates, whatever.

Now that word "mimic" has a rather disparaging connotation, doesn't it. As though they weren't creative enough to come up with their own sound, so they had to just copy the ones they heard around them.  To me this seems a little unfair.  After all, did the neighborhood Robin or Cardinal come up with their own sound?  I don't think so.  They copied it from dad, or it was already built into their dna.  Same for every other species.  But along comes the Northern Mockingbird and he starts to belt out the songs of all the other birds.  Hey, that's pretty amazing.

Elvis made a pretty good career out of singing songs that were all written by others, and now they call him "The King!"  So let's give the Northern Mockingbird some respect.  It's all about how one performs the sounds in live performance, right?  Well our Mr. King bird does pretty well on that score.  Each of the songs of these other birds is repeated by Mr. King several times, and then another song is taken up and repeated many times over, before going on to another.  One can listen to this performance for quite a long time and not hear him start over with a song he has done before. On top of that, he may spread his wings and flutter up in the air in a circle and come back to the branch he launched from, while continuing to sing, and not missing a single beat along the way.  Elvis wiggled his hips, but did you ever see him do that?  Not I, not even on the Ed Sullivan Show.   

And here's the best part of all.  He often sings like this in the middle of the night, when all the other birds are sleeping or watching the late show, or whatever.  He doesn't take a break.  He's out there on the highest branch he can find, singing away at the top of his voice in the stillness of the night for hours on end.  

  

But is it music?  You betcha!  Perhaps you read my article about the deaf percussionist, Evelyn Glennie, who said her aim in life "is to teach the world to listen. . . allow your body to open up, allow your body to be this resonating chamber. . . just experience the whole journey of that sound." The medium of music is sound.  The composer John Cage said, "There is no noise, only sound."  And musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez said, "the border between music and noise is always culturally defined.  By all accounts there is no single and intercultural universal concept defining what music might be, except that it is 'sound through time'."

For me the sound of the Northern Nightingale singing through the middle of the night is glorious sound through time.  For me that is music to my ears! And it has the other qualities that make the live performance of music special to witness.  You hear it in the moment the sound is created and then it is gone.  Take it in fully, "experience the whole journey of that sound," as it is there now, but perhaps not for long.  The particular sequence of sounds, the sequence of bird songs that are sung, the rhythm, tempo, dynamics, timbre and texture of those sounds are unique to that one performance, never to be repeated again.  That is what makes live performance so exciting.  It is not ordinary.  It is special, created in that moment, heard in the moment, and then it is no more.  So enjoy it while you can!

Did you notice him do his little dance of flight in the middle of his performance?  Now listen to the incredible variety of sounds in this next one.

                                      

And finally here's a chance to go to school and really learn about this amazing performer.  At 3:30 in the video, they even identify which species of bird song the mockingbird is singing as it goes along.  So if you are lucky enough to have a Northern Mockingbird take up residence in your own back yard, as I have this spring, that one creature will create the sound of an entire forest of different bird species, all by himself.

            

Often I like to take a walk around my neighborhood late at night, after most people have retired for the night. There is no traffic on the street, no people walking about, and one can be alone with one's thoughts and the stillness of the night.  The jumble of the day can fall away and one can more clearly see the way ahead.  Two nights ago I finished up a lovely hour long chat with my Facebook friend on the Northumberland Coast of Northern England. I had been thinking about capping off the evening with a walk, but as I got up from my desk I heard my many-tongued mimic wailing away in the back yard. So instead of the walk, I stepped out onto the porch and sat down and listened.  Mr. King was singing his heart out without a moment's pause, and his singing was the only sound to be heard in an otherwise totally silent night. I just sat there, in the same spot that was Marcia's absolute favorite place to sit, and I just took in the performance.  It was marvelous.  I know Marcia loved the green grass, the trellis and vines, the flowers and lush foliage of the yard, as well as the squirrels, hummingbirds, and cats that made it their home.  But I don't actually know whether she ever enjoyed a performance of a night time Mockingbird from that favorite spot.  I hope so.        

Perhaps the glorious sounds of this bird has won itself some respect after all.  Of course one of the classic tales in American literature is the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Harper Lee called To Kill a Mockingbird.  In the book, Miss Maudie explains that mockingbirds never harm other living creatures.  "They don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us."  So to kill one would be to kill what is innocent and harmless, and Atticus warns that "it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."   

            

Mockingbirds have not always lived only in the wild, as they were once popular as pets.  In fact Thomas Jefferson had such a pet, which he named Dick.  He didn't know about "The King" back then.  This aspect of the lives of mockingbirds was described in the traditional lullaby, "Hush Little Baby" which had lyrics that said:

Hush little baby, don't say a word,

Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird.

And if that mockingbird don't sing,

Mama's gonna buy you a diamond ring. 

In 1963 Inez and Charlie Foxx cashed in by recording their version of this song, simply called "Mockingbird," which became a big hit in both the US and the UK.  Since then the song has been covered by the great Dusty Springfield, as well as by Carly Simon & James Taylor, Toby & Krystal Keith, and Katie Melua.  It was also featured in episodes of the TV series "Will and Grace" and the film "Dumb and Dumber."

Of course now you want to hear this song.  And YouTube is waiting to serve up any one of them to you.  The Dusty Springfield performance at the 1965 New Musical Express Poll Winners concert is the best.  But in the spirit of our many-tongued mimic, I've decided that it's most appropriate to give you a version of pure mimicry, perhaps the best example of lip synching to be found on YouTube, the work of amy and kass.

That's all folks!

How I Discovered My Passion in Life

                                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                                          

Let me start by saying I wasn't trying to discover my passion in life. Of course I had heard many say that one should find and follow one's passion in life to be happy and successful.  There are books written on the subject, blog posts and websites with lists of questions to ask one's self to discover it, as well as courses offered on the subject by websites and even churches.  I had no urgency about finding my passion, as I had been working successfully for over thirty years in a career that I enjoyed and it always kept the wolves at bay.  I had a lot of interests in life which occupied whatever free time my work allowed.  Mostly my life was goal oriented, following the path to accomplish that next purpose.  So I had never tried any of those approaches, as there was apparently no need.

                                                                 

But my approach to life began to change in the summer of 2009 when Marcia got her diagnosis of cancer, not long after I learned that one of my very best friends in college had succumbed from a heart attack.  Life had become more precious and my generation no longer enjoyed a really long future, the immortality of youth.  One began to think more seriously about what to do with whatever time one might have left.  Then on November 1, 2009 when Marcia passed on, I found myself in new, uncharted territory.  Suddenly all that mattered was to deal with our loss, as the mourning process began.  There was no purpose to achieve, no clear path to follow, no timetable to meet a deadline.  Thankfully, Marcia's suffering had finally ended.  Nothing could be done to bring her back.  But how would I deal with this?  

                                                                

At her memorial service, I listened in my grief to her friend and minister of forty-three years and his wife tell about her life, stories going back to 1966.  Then her son gave a beautiful, emotional, chronological account of her life, story after story after story that illustrated the strength and character of his mother, who he clearly loves and respects very much.  There we all were, her friends and family, enjoying these stories, learning all kinds of interesting things about her life, and remembering those parts we had experienced directly.

             

As I looked around the room, I could see we were all genuinely grateful to hear more about her life and to discover things we hadn't known.  But it suddenly dawned on me that there had not been a single story told that I had not already heard, directly from Marcia!  I had known her for nearly forty years, but only intimately during the last decade of her life.  I realized that during those ten years, Marcia had shared with me everything she considered precious and important about her life.  A huge wave of gratitude came over me as I realized how lucky I had been to share that time with her.  This feeling was a blessing, but quickly an even stronger, transcendent feeling of pride and joy welled up inside of me, as I realized the particular bond we had developed was a gift she gave only to me, a very strong and intimate connection, which I will always keep close to my heart and will never ever forget.

                                 

This brought me a huge amount of relief and peace.  I resolved to always honor her memory, and attend to whatever came my way in this mourning process.  The grief had been replaced by the wave of gratitude.  I  still thought of her every day, but I was in no hurry for that to change, or to "get over it" in any way.  I would just see how life would go now.  I was open to any thoughts or feelings I had about her, was willing to accept any communication I had to her, or from her, and remained open to any other ideas that might come my way.

                                            

And it was with that open attitude that I planned to celebrate her birthday on January 24, 2010.  I've already written about that evening when I listened to Mahler's "Farewell to Life" and realized that I needed to experience more live classical music in my life, which led to my planning the series of concerts that I have been attending.  And now I've written about the first concert with the performance of The Planets (don't forget the Corn Nuts), the magnificent performance of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony and the transcendent moment I experienced upon the completion of the Rachmaninoff 3rd Piano Concerto.

          

But now it's time to go back to February 10, 2010, the evening before that first concert in the series.  I had made the final plans with my Chiro Friend for getting to the concert hall for the show.  She had never attended a symphony orchestra concert, so I had briefed her on what to expect.  I told her she could wear a ballroom gown, but then relented and admitted that concerts were no longer quite that formal.  In fact, I assured her that I would probably not even wear a tie, just a nice sweater.

                      

So the night before the concert I decided to pick out what I would wear from my closet.  I slid open the closet door and began to pull out sports jackets for consideration.  As I looked over the shirts, I began to think about ties and I had this strong feeling that one goes with the other.  So I pulled out some ties and found myself selecting which tie would look the best with the shirt and jacket I had chosen.  I set them aside, so they were ready for the following evening.  Okay, I was going to wear a tie after all, in spite of what I had told my Chiro Friend!  Somehow, that felt very good.  I went to bed looking forward to the next day and the start of my concert season.

               

Only I couldn't get to sleep right away, as I thought about how I felt as I picked out those clothes.  A comfortable, familiar feeling had come over me.  I was feeling very much at home, in a safe frame of mind.  What was this feeling?  Was it because I was going to wear a jacket that Marcia had bought me many years earlier?  No, it went deeper than that.  I was pulled back to 1964, getting ready for one of the dozens of concerts that I attended as a student at Oberlin College, where we always wore a jacket and tie, both at concerts and at dinner every evening.  Decades later I had been experiencing that same delicious anticipation from getting ready to see another live performance of music.  It was a dance I had been through so many times, which always led to a very positive and enjoyable experience.

                

As I had been going through the mourning process, I had been paying close attention to my feelings and seeing where they would lead me.  And that's what I did again that night.  Only this time, parts of my life began to fall into place like a puzzle.  The feeling I had when I began the process of dressing for a concert was the key that unlocked the door and all the connections came tumbling out.  I began to look over parts of my life, the important parts, and my life began to make sense, in a way that had never occurred before.  As more and more of these connections came to mind, I began to get more and more excited, as the epiphany fully took hold of my consciousness.

                                  

Far too excited to sleep, I finally switched on the light and pulled out the notebook by my bed and started to write, summing up my life, as I now clearly saw it, in one single line.

   2:43 AM       What ties my life together: MUSIC!       2/10/10

This was followed by five pages of single spaced writing, listing one example after another of that realization, covering events from all periods in my life, going all the way back to before I started grade school.  I finally stopped after listing fifty of these examples from my life.  My understanding of my life had taken a quantum leap forward.

                                         

I had discovered the thread that ran through my entire life.  I had discovered my passion in life.

                                  

                                                                                               

The mourning process had gotten me to open up my attention, to let it reach out in all directions, not just the path ahead.  And finally I came to see what held my life together.  I had always concentrated on the path to my goals.  The beautiful green trees were always there, but they didn't lead anywhere.  It was the path that lead somewhere and so it was the path that needed to be followed.  Or so I thought.

                            

Those trees had always been there.  They were so much always there, that I didn't realize this was anything unusual or special about my life.  They were so much a part of me that I didn't even recognize that they define who I am.  It wasn't until February 10, 2010 that I finally got a look at the forest from above.  And then I realized that it was a forest, not just a path passing through pretty green trees.

                   

Of course the forest is the music, my love for music, my passion for music, that holds together all phases of my life and makes it uniquely MY LIFE.  Realizing this has changed everything.  I have given myself some time to let this sink in, perhaps to make sure that I'm not just delusional.  I'm not.  This is important and real.

                                        

As I said at the outset, I wasn't looking for this understanding.  And if the question had been posed to me, "What is your passion in life?" I would have said, "I don't know."  Or maybe I would have said that I was passionate about a lot of things, and I'm not sure that One Single Passion in Life is possible, or worth trying to discover.  Marcia once wrote that I am an "honorable and passionate man."  I liked that, because I knew I could feel passion and express passion at times, and it felt really good to do that.  But how could there be a Single Passion in my life?

                           

But there can be, if you realize that the passion can be as big as a forest going out in all directions and off into the distance.  And there are a lot of paths down there among the trees, but what is most important is the beauty, strength and stability of the forest.  Even though I wasn't looking for it, I'm very glad I found it.  And now I encourage everyone, including you, to take a look around and notice what is always there in your life, that makes you YOU.  And if you're fortunate like me, and you discover your passion, I think you'll find that it brings a lot of order to your past and it orients you in a positive way that you may not have previously experienced.  And if this does happen for you, tell me about it in the comments.  I would be very interested in your experiences.

                                     

                                                       

The Redemptive Power of Music

       

Yesterday an important new talk was posted on the TED TALKS website.  It is a talk given in Long Beach in February 2010 by Robert Gupta, a violinist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, about his experiences with his musician friend, Nathaniel Ayers.  He describes how he personally witnessed "the redemptive power of music" work its healing magic on Mr. Ayers.  Please watch this short video right now, before I continue. 

          

                         

Were you moved by his story and his conviction to always make music with his friend?  I certainly was!  Gupta was very eloquent when he summed up his experiences with this man and how it relates to music.

"And I understood that this was the very essence of art.  This was the very reason why we made music.  That we take something that exists within all of us at our very fundamental core, our emotions, and through our artistic lens, through our creativity, we're able to shape those emotions into reality.  And the reality of that expression reaches all of us and moves us, inspires and unites us."

And in the line that TED used for the title of the Gupta talk, he said the following.

"Music is medicine.  Music changes us and for Nathaniel, music is sanity."

Correctly, the title of the talk generalizes the last three words, by removing the specific reference to Nathaniel.  This applies to all of us.  I don't suffer from a mental illness, but as I was going through the mourning process after the loss of Marcia, I realized the medicine I needed to add to my life.  Which I stated in the following way.

"I need to experience live classical music more often. It makes me stronger, more sane. I will be better, with more of it in my life."

 And clearly I was totally right to draw this conclusion, as shown by the fact that I experienced healing moments during both the performance of Mahler's 2nd Symphony and the performance of the Rachmaninoff 3rd Piano Concerto.  

In the TED Talk by Evelyn Glennie, she said, "Music really is our daily medicine."  And you may recall that Dr. Karl Paulnack says that "Music is a basic need of human survival."  So there is a lot of agreement on the importance of music and I started this blog to report on my life in music.   

Now as it turns out, I had already heard something about the life story of Nathaniel Ayers, as I had seen the piece 60 Minutes did on him.  When you watch that video below, you'll get to see him playing his cello and trumpet and you'll get to meet the journalist, Steve Lopez, who discovered him on the streets of Los Angeles and wrote many columns, and then a book which became the film The Soloist, about those experiences.  You will also see Ayers interacting with Gupta and other members of the LA Philharmonic.

             

You will also see his sister, Jennifer Ayers-Moore, describe the devastating after effects of the shock treatment that Ayers was subjected to, in an attempt to restore his sanity, after he first became ill at Julliard.

"I remember when he came out, he had this look on his face, it was . . . almost like a zombie.  She [their mother] expected him to go in and come out a different person.  And that . . . it just didn't work out that way."

You may recall that Gupta mentioned that Ayers now refuses treatment, having been treated so long ago with "shock therapy and Thorazine and handcuffs."  In the 60 Minutes piece, the journalist and his sister are left hoping at the end that he will eventually accept treatment from one of the so-called "new, more effective drugs."  It seems to me that Ayers learned his lesson then and it's time the world recognizes he now benefits from a humane treatment, in his work with music and his musician friends.

                            
So the journalist voiced his wish that, "This man is well on the way to recovery" only to discover that, "The next day, he's the devil."  But the musicians clearly get that his redemption has come and will continue to come through his work with the music and the musicians.  How much easier would his path had been, if he had not been so seriously harmed by the shock treatment?  Well the musicians and Ayers himself are the heroes of this piece, saving the planet, one soul at a time!!

And notice that Ayers does not view himself as a victim, in spite of the harmful treatment he received.  On the contrary, in one lucid moment in the video, he states, "Music is saying, you know, life isn't that bad . . ." and in another, "It's very good to be alive right now."  And think about this.  How many people on the rough streets of Los Angeles has Ayers himself helped by performing his own live music?  My guess is that it is more than a few.    

And so we end with a performance on the cello by Nathaniel Ayers, accompanied by Joanne Pearce Martin, Principal Keyboardist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

                                                                              

                                   

That Magnificent Sound

                                                                  
It is 8:00 pm and I just returned home from a Sunday afternoon San Francisco Symphony performance of Mahler's Second Symphony, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT), with Laura Claycomb (soprano), Katarina Karnéus (mezzo-soprano), and the full San Francisco Symphony Chorus, directed by Ragnar Bohlin.
                                 

The original plan was to take both my Chiro Friend (CF) and the Dancing Cellist (DC) to this concert.  But as it turned out, the Dancing Cellist was under a lot of pressure to prepare for her college final exams, which are next week.  So on Saturday, it was decided that her mother, the Dancing Poet (DP), would attend in her place.  Neither CF nor DP had ever been to a live performance of any music by Gustav Mahler.

DP attended the pre-concert talk with me and CF joined us for the concert itself.  The very informative talk was given by the Program Annotator for the symphony, James M. Keller.  Keller is a graduate of my alma mater, Oberlin College.

I am not a music critic, nor a music journalist.  So I don't intend to write a review of this, or any other, concert.  I intend to describe my life in music in this blog, and that is all.  I will write about what I personally experienced  in hopes that the reader might find this of some use.

On the drive home, one word came to mind to describe this performance.  It is magnificent.  Look it up and you'll find the following words as synonyms for this word: grand, splendid, majestic, superb, glorious, impressive.  They all apply.  

There is no way to describe this experience in words.  One simply must experience  the music  directly oneself.  And that is what I encourage everyone to do.

I am partial to Mahler.  He and Bob Dylan are the two musical giants who have meant the most to me in my life and have had the most impact upon me as a listener.  So perhaps I came to the concert with a bias in favor of this piece of music.  But upon its conclusion, both CF and DP were excited about the performance and were very happy to have spent the afternoon in this way.

I am not a critical listener.  That is, I am not listening for things that I might criticize.  I am there to experience the sound and see where it takes me.  With a larger than usual orchestra and the full chorus and two soloists, there were probably somewhere between 200 and 250 dedicated musicians, between those on stage and the horns, trumpets and percussion in two locations offstage.  Surely each one has spent thousands of hours learning their craft and practicing their instrument to master its use, in order to win the right to sit on that stage to play for us today.  For most, they did not do this in order to make a fortune or to become world famous.  They did it because of their love of music.  And to my mind they are doing God's work, elevating the consciousness of those who pay to see them perform.
                   

So I have tremendous respect for these world class musicians.  And in recent years, this orchestra  under the direction of MTT has recorded the full cycle of Mahler symphonic works and has gained a world-wide reputation for being an excellent Mahler orchestra.  We are very fortunate in the SF Bay Area to have this great symphony available for our listening pleasure.  So I considered it a great honor for me to be able to hear their performance of this work.

I am open to feeling whatever emotions and feelings the performance might bring my way.  Before they began to play, I was feeling nervous and anxious, just like I used to feel before I performed music in my childhood.  Perhaps I was reliving some of those feelings, or perhaps some of those feelings were coming from some of the performers or others in the hall, or both.   Whatever their origin,  those feelings went away as the music began to be performed, just as they used to do when I was a young performer.

Now understand that this work deals with the subject of death and resurrection.  Mahler originally called what eventually became the first movement Funeral Rites and the fourth and final movements specifically address death and resurrection in the words sung by the soloists and chorus.  In that way, this is serious music, dealing with a serious subject.  For me this had special meaning, as I have been going through the mourning process  after the loss of a love of my life, Marcia (RIP).  And it is this loss that has directly led me to this rejuvenation of my musical life and the series of concerts that I will be attending during these next few months.

In preparing for the concert I had read the chapter on the Second Symphony in a Mahler biography I own.  And I had listened to a number of performances of the symphony, both on CD and with You Tube videos.  The latter mostly consisted of performances by the NY Philharmonic directed by Leonard Bernstein and an 8/30/98 performance by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Simon Battle.  The latter videos have excellent video quality, as well as subtitles with the English translation of the singing in the final two movements.     

On three separate occasions during the final days leading up to the performance today, I had burst into tears while watching the last eight minutes of the Rattle/CBSO performance.  In each case I was watching the video with a great deal of interest, but not in any sort of morose state, and each time my tears had simply burst out unexpectedly as I watched.  Each time this grief was accompanied by thoughts about Marcia.  And each time it felt like a healing experience.

                                  

                      

Perhaps part of my nervousness before this performance was over wondering whether I might find myself bursting into tears during this performance as well.  Our seats were in the middle of the second row, less than ten feet from the edge of the stage.  I didn't want to cause a scene.  So before it started, I warned both CF and DP about this possibility, so that they would not be thrown off by it, if it should come to pass.

Well it did not happen that way.  But the music did move me in significant ways at many points during the performance and at three different points (not the same point as when I watched the videos) tears began rolling down my cheeks.  I just let them roll.  I didn't even wipe them off, not wanting to direct any of my attention off of the performance.  And once again these felt like healing moments.

As I thought about all this on the drive home, I realized the point I wanted to make in writing about this experience.  And that is that far too many people these days are missing out on these experiences.  There was one empty seat in the first row right in front of us, but mostly the concert looked to be sold out.  But I had been able to buy my tickets only six weeks before the concert.  For such a large metropolitan area, this tells me there are a huge number of people who don't have the slightest idea what they are missing by not attending concerts by this world class symphony orchestra.

Perhaps I should keep this incredible secret to myself, as it certainly makes it easier for me to get tickets.  But how does this affect our culture and the overall well-being of our population?  As Dr. Karl Paulnack has said, attending a performance of Mahler's Second "...can be a very deep transformative life saving experience."   And as he said in his Welcome Address to new students at The Boston Conservatory, "music is a basic need of human survival."

He concludes his Welcome Address by saying the following. 
                         

"Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do."

When one first reads his statement, perhaps it seems like hyperbole, wishful thinking.  But when you  directly experience the majestic power of great music performed by a great symphony orchestra, his statement begins to feel both plausible and right.  Surely this is God's work.

                                                                              

Follow Your Heart

On January 24, 2010 my life began to shift in a new direction.

I had decided to set aside much of the day to remember Marcia, my partner in life during much of the previous decade, who had passed away on November 1, 2009.  I had been going through the mourning process since then, with her in my thoughts every day.  Right after her passing I had taken a 3,000 mile road trip in my car, to Colorado and back, to meditate about her and our lives, together and apart.   I spoke with my  family, my closest friends, my co-workers, my clients, my chiropractor, my general practitioner, and my favorite neighbor about Marcia, my life with Marcia, and my loss.  I drove to Los Angeles and attended her very moving memorial service. I had no particular plan or agenda, nor any particular time table.  I had just decided to let my thoughts be on her and to honor her memory with my thoughts.  I was in no hurry to "get over" the loss, or reach any particular conclusion with the mourning process.  I had decided to just let myself have the time to explore this process.

January 24, 2010 would have been her 66th birthday.  Marcia never made any big deal about birthdays, but for her 65th birthday I had designed a special birthday card just for her, complete with some nice photographs, an appropriate Dylan quote, and some heartfelt prose about her qualities.  She liked it a lot, saying, "Very thoughtful of you and beautifully done."  Marcia was a fine artist, so the "beautifully done" meant a lot to me, as she had excellent judgment about the quality of art.  She was very pleased that I was "exploring and experiencing the creative process." 

I never imagined that by her next birthday she would be gone.  And so as that day approached, I resolved to do something special to remember her.  There were a number of things I did to remember her throughout that day, but the most special thing I had planned was to devote the evening to meditating about her, inviting her presence in my heart.  It seemed to me the best way I could do that would be to listen to a recording of Mahler's Ninth Symphony on my living room stereo, while letting myself go to her.

I chose that piece partly because of the subject matter, Mahler's "Farewell to Life."  But my attendance at a performance of this symphony in 1994 had been one of the peak experiences in my life, so I knew that  the music would be worthy to the occasion.  And the article I wrote about that performance was one of the first things I had Marcia read when we first began connecting as a couple.  She liked the article very much.

And so that's what I did.  It was a wonderful evening, well spent.  Somewhere along the way, I began to feel nourished by the music.  As Dr. Karl Paulnack has said,

"Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds."

The music was doing that for me that evening, as I meditated about Marcia and our lives.  It was helping to heal my heart.  And one clear thought came to me, above all others.   

"I need to experience live classical music more often.  It makes me stronger, more sane.  I will be better, with more of it in my life."

The very next week I was working at my desk, with Pandora playing music for me when the internet music service ran one of their brief ads between songs.  It was an ad for the San Francisco Symphony, which was promoting a 50% off sale coming up in just a few days.  Bingo!

I spent the rest of the evening exploring their website and looking at their upcoming concerts and the great deals they were offering on tickets.  I decided to order tickets to seven of the concerts as soon as the sale began.

But I also decided not to attend alone.  In recent years I had gone to a number of concerts alone.  And though the concerts were wonderful, I always missed having a companion at the performances.

In fact the very last concert I had attended was a Leonard Cohen concert in San Jose, the final performance in that tour. When I had a discussion with the two young ladies sitting next to me, one of them asked, "So tell me, why a nice man like you is here at this show all by yourself!"  Well of course, I was really there with them, at least at that moment.  But I had to admit to myself that she really did have a point.

And so I decided to find someone to go with me to these concerts. In fact there will be at least three different women attending various of these concerts with me.  The first to agree was my Chiro Friend, who had never attended a symphony concert in her life, but had offered wise counsel during my grieving process, not to mention all the great help she has given me with my body aches and pains.  The second to agree was my Dancing Cellist Friend, who had a room in my home for a couple of years and had been there for me many times.  The third to agree was my Dancing Poet Friend, who has been very dear to me for nearly forty years, a friend for life.

I have started to follow my heart, to act on that firm resolve that came into my consciousness that Sunday evening in January.  This was the first step that I took with this new direction, that has already had far reaching beneficial effects upon my life.  I invite you to keep reading this blog and follow along as I write about my life in music.

                                                           

The Value of Music

         
Four months ago I received an email from an old friend, which contained the transcript of a speech that was given on September 1, 2004 at The Boston Conservatory by Dr. Karl Paulnack, director of the Music Division.  It was one of those messages that start with the header of a forwarded message, showing a dozen or so email addresses that it had been forwarded to before it arrived in my in box.  Often such emails contain bad (or good) jokes, appeals for some sort of political action, or the like.  Most of these get deleted after a quick scan of their content.

This one was different.  I read it and wrote back, "Wow, a really really fantastic speech.  I completely agree with what he said.  Thanks for sending it."

Mind you, this speech had been making its way around the internet from one in box to another more than five years after the speech was given. Clearly I was not the only one to find it to be fantastic!

But it only planted a seed for further thought at that time.  You see, the email had arrived just two days after Marcia had ended her battle with cancer by leaving her nearly 66 year old crippled body behind.  I had first known this woman almost forty years ago and in the last decade I had come to adore her and know her better than any other person in my life.  That day I was just at the beginning of the mourning process.  My thoughts were with Marcia and I was just going to concentrate on honoring her memory and dealing with her loss, until it felt right to do otherwise.

As I continued along through the mourning process, this seed began to grow and along with other events, contributed to a series of life changing realizations that have given me a new purpose and direction in my life.  This blog is where I will be documenting some of those changes.

So I want to share this speech with you.  In the email I received, the subject header said, Why Music?  It appears on a number of websites with the title, Why Music Matters.  After appearing on many other websites, The Boston Conservatory finally put it up on their own website, with the title, Karl Paulnack Welcome Address.  I will not copy it onto my blog, as many others have done, as Dr. Paulnack deserves to have more direct control over his own writing.

But I will quote one part from it.

"Music is a basic need of human survival.  Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds."

When I told my friend that "I completely agree with what he said," it was this idea that I was writing about.  And that role of music in life has been manifested for me as I have been going through this mourning process, just as he describes it.  So this is at the core of why I am creating this blog.  I will be coming back to this idea in many ways.

So I want you to go to The Boston Conservatory website and read the speech for yourself.  And if you find yourself moved, like I was, I hope you will return to this blog and join me to explore this subject in the future.

Karl Paulnack Welcome Address

Everybody Loves Classical Music

               
There are many inspirational videos of the Ted Talks on You Tube.  One that is especially relevant to this blog was given by Benjamin Zander, Music Director of the Boston Philharmonic and faculty member at the New England Conservatory.  His talk, Classical Music with Shining Eyes, was given in February 2008 in Monterey, CA. 

The title of this posting is taken from that talk, in which he states, "Everybody loves classical music.  They just haven't found out about it yet."  With the confidence of a true leader, he proceeds to demonstrate this assertion to the audience of 1,600 attendees in a very touching way.

And during the ovation he received at the end of his performance, he leaped up from his piano bench and rushed to the front of the stage, applauding the audience.  He then explained that at a similar demonstration for 12 year old school children he applauded in a similar way.  And when asked, one of the children correctly explained why it was appropriate for him to be applauding them, by saying, " 'Cause we were listening! "

And therein lies the beauty of live musical performance, that one does not enjoy with even the best recorded performances on LP, CD, or DVD.  With live performance, the audience participates in the event, providing attention that can inspire the performers to new heights.  When we witness live performances, we should not consider our roles to be passive, but rather that we are helping to create that moment.  The Ted audience here created an example of an audience "listening, understanding, and being moved by a piece of Chopin," the Prelude in E-Minor (opus 28, no. 4).

Before playing the Chopin, Zander invited each person to participate in the performance, saying "Would you think of somebody who you adored, who is no longer there."  And so I thought of Marcia (RIP 1944-2009) and found myself moved at the end. 

Please watch the video and savor the joyful presentation.

My hope is that this blog will "awaken possibility" in the readers, just as Zander came to realize that it was his role "to make other people powerful" through his conducting.