Playing from the miracle of everyday life
I feared for her when she stood up to sing the song she’d written. A retired special education teacher, keen amateur pianist, and devout yogi, Jane (not her real name) wasn’t a trained singer or songwriter. And yet, as she stood in front of a songwriting class full of teenagers, she sang of her devotion to her favorite Hindu gods, earnestness and love pouring out of every word and note. The young American audience—most of whom came from Christian backgrounds—responded not with embarrassment or scorn, but with rapt attention. They were witnessing something real, and it held them until the last note died away.
That performance occurred over a decade ago, but the memory of it came back to me last spring when I attended a new music concert in New York City. Four composers were featured, three of whom were present and participated in the program. The first half consisted of masterful performances of meticulously-crafted compositions—cerebral, tasteful, and musical. I expected more of the same in the second half. Instead, as pianist Paul Barnes and native flutist Ron Warren started playing, the bottom of the cerebral, tasteful, closed world of the other performances disappeared and dropped us all into the vastness of the universe. Something beautiful and raw and real entered the room through their music, spoken from their shared bedrock of belief in the power of eternity and transcendence. I walked out changed by the experience, and was unable to find words to describe the performance until several days had passed.
In both situations, the performers were able to say something meaningful because they played from what they’d experienced. No borrowed beauty or depth matches the purity of music that springs from a foundation of a deeply-lived life. No technical training or singing tone alone opens doorways to people’s hearts. This transcendence, deep humanity, creation of moments so humble yet so rich go beyond creed or belief. It flows from individuals who know that they have a sacred duty to let life flow through them. They know this duty asks them to live every part of their lives fully engaged so that everything that makes the world heartbreaking and transcendent finds its home in their souls. They choose to see. They choose to create. And to do so, they court beauty.
Perhaps no one stated this better than the late great pianist Arthur Rubinstein when he said,
“I'm passionately involved in life: I love its change, its color, its movement. To be alive, to be able to see, to walk, to have houses, music, paintings - it's all a miracle.”
Rubinstein’s words are inspiring, but if we want to invite his sense of the miraculous into our own lives, we must first be willing to drop our blinders and learn to see it. Everyone’s heard the phrase, “garbage in, garbage out” and it applies to every aspect of our lives, not just what we eat. As artists, it’s essential to surround ourselves with beauty, to seek it out—in our personal environments, to the things we read, to the way we look at the rest of the world. We’re conduits. If we take in nothing but filth we can offer nothing of beauty. We starve ourselves on the soul-killing fast food of negativity and passivity. Rather than seeing the miracle of a fledgling taking its first flight or the intricate pattern of rain on the window, we immerse ourselves in bad news. We choose to think of ourselves as victims of our surroundings and fail to find the beauty that can be had in even the most humble of circumstances.
‘Cause here’s the thing: life isn’t on a screen, it’s all around us, spilling out of doorways and windows, traveling on the wind, and in the noble truths found in art and good literature. Through these noble things we expand our ability to see, hear, think, and feel. Through noble things we fill our creative wells with ideas and beauties that spill forth in our playing and in our daily lives. This is our responsibility as artists and human beings—to dare to keep our minds and souls from being highjacked by ugliness and all that is false.
This way of thinking requires a commitment to personal responsibility. We are the only ones in control of our perspectives. No one else is responsible for how we choose to see the world. We’re offered richness and beauty every day, but it’s up to us to choose to receive it. It’s available to all of us, regardless of age or social circumstances. When we’re blind to it, it’s we who have chosen to ignore the miracle of existence that offers itself to us everyday, everywhere.
This truth was one I learned in my 20s when I was broke, in a dead-end relationship, and experiencing the darkest depression of my life, I instinctively groped toward every manifestation of beauty, regardless of how humble. I stopped looking at the macro and started studying the micro. I couldn’t yet see how to fix the big things so I dignified the daily details of life and opened myself to the miracle of trees raining cherry blossoms in the spring, and late afternoon sunlight slanting across the hardwood floors of my apartment. And, over time, this immersion in beauty led me to meaning and, eventually, to the freedom I sought.
What I’ve seen over the years is that when I struggle to bring forth beauty in my music, it’s time for me to step back and look at how much beauty I’m bringing into the rest of my life. Have I been unwittingly beggaring myself by walking through my days blindfolded by the stresses and concerns of my life? Am I depriving myself of essential artistic nutrients by passively consuming ugly, cheap, divisive things? When I find myself in this place, the only way things change is to step away from all of that and learn to see, read, and live things differently.
What I know from experience is that there’s no room for cynicism or self-consciousness in this sort of life. I have to drop my pretensions to be open to what’s around me. I’m learning that without self-consciousness I’m free to embrace my own personal quirkiness and without cynicism I can consciously embrace hope and the possibility of redemption. And through hope, I can choose to believe that human beings are much more than angry animated pieces of meat, but are capable of acts of beauty, transcendence and mercy beyond comprehension.
What belongs in our music? The “all” of our lives. The dizzying magic of falling in love. The shimmer of late afternoon sun on a still lake. The warmth and crackle of a fire. The comfort of a hug. The taste of a perfectly ripe peach. The silence of death. The discovery of travel. The rumble of thunder. The gentle plink of rain. The soaring of a hawk. The softness of a kiss. The eternal, unbreakable bond of love that animates our lives and gives meaning to our music.
Everywhere is holy ground.
Photo by Tim Wilson, @timwilson7, courtesy of UpSplash