A Path For the Heart

The road less traveled is often quoted when one is proud of the unique path they have chosen. To blaze a trail or follow the way with less footprints often gives us a journey with a more complex landscape. If life were a musical composition, we could either follow the melody line or expand on what is simple and elaborate on the tones and tempos as the music notes rise and fall. This is more than taking a short cut to make something easier, this is taking a path from what opens our lives to creativity, connection, and challenge that helps us live a little bit more and understand that sometimes it is the path to hearing our hearts and our  history.

We often have to take a detour from the path we were taking because life is always under construction. The detour can also be our choice as Robert Frost's poem explains. When we take off our shoes and creep forward towards the frontiers of our comfort levels, we become pioneers discovering how surprisingly beautiful a life can be lived when it isn't always planned out. To some this might be wanderlust, others improvisation, and without both we cannot chart new waters in our lives.

Improvisation. As a part of art or comedy or music, I think part of it comes from an inner restlessness that comes from being tired of the same old routines or in other words, boredom. Another part probably comes from the reaches of the human spirit - exhaustion, terror, rage, inspiration, speechless experiences that can only be evoked through the stirrings of the soul that come out in art. It seems to be the way of creativity, the way of reaching into the rhythm of one's body or one's community and moving forward in response to these pulls that guide us down our own road less traveled.

Sometimes interruptions create these forks in the road that give us the choice of how fast our lives are going. Life always looks like it's going fast when looking through the photo album and through the rear view mirror, but that's because we're seeing all that has happened all at once rather than over the time it took for us to experience these things. I'm not saying we have to blow all over the place like a balloon in the wind, but I'm thinking that if we release some of our routine to our senses, our surroundings and feel our soul take hold, we can begin to find the beating drum of our heartbeat. With that we can possibly realize the human possibility where peace and harmony based on each of our souls, pieces of the diverse puzzle of humanity can be real as the riffs we play from our lives.

balloon in the wind

fun with photography

your own path by water

or land

Water Reaching The Depths

Water flows along brooks and rests in tarns in mountains that reach into the sky. Its captivating power has a way of connecting with us, perhaps because so much of our bodies contain this mysterious substance. As I listen to water flowing or pattering on the fly of a tent, it amazes me how the natural sound reaches me where I need to be soothed, and allows me to reflect on the movement of life and the wideness of this planet. 

In many ways, folk melodies strummed from a guitar, mandolin, banjo, or plucked from a fiddle have a remarkably similar effect on me. As the melodies join the harmonies of a vocalist singing from the raw, evocative roots that touch the heart, and reverberate within the soul with memory and melancholy. Such music can move me to tears either from sadness or from recollection, and even profound joy linking the waters of life to the mellow richness of a folk guitarist singing to the cultures and to the bowels of the earth. 

These melodies and waters form a well for our spirit to be reached, and maybe shared. In this well, the depths of our dreams, our histories, our relationships can be drawn and bring us together or more in touch with ourselves. Why are we drawn to waterfalls, rapids, and crashing waves? The fast movement of water is like the fast movement of life and cannot be slowed, but can be savored and experienced with it's full force and blast of emotion and heart that makes us feel alive. As the melodies reach us, and inspire us, we can form them to mean what they will for our lives. From splashing in puddles and laughing as we dive deeper into the salty waters of the ocean discovering the soul of the earth to rising again as we grow more aware of what this life brings by wading in and embracing what is there. 

Niagara Falls - Summer 2010 

Light From the Soul

Life's precious moments cannot be held onto, because like water, they are cherished and felt, before slipping away. The memories may linger, but whatever was happening gives way to whatever will happen, or is happening. Our lives can be touched and forever changed by the momentous or the quiet murmur that strikes us where we are able to receive and know it before it passes away.

The human soul can be evoked, and evoke as music or art. Music as a force can drive into our souls and rouse us into action like nothing else. The soaring of melody and the undercurrent of harmony may mount our hearts and leave us in tears for music is one of the few expressions where we can feel solidarity with our sister, understanding with our brother, angry with our condition, or jubilant with the connections we forge with our ancestors and the celebrations we have with each other. As music is created from the conditions that we feel in our soul, it is shared by those that sing or play with the composer, and maybe even embellished as the community and kinship is formed. 

Holiday music can also create connections to ourselves and to others. This afternoon as I sat in the Hochstein Performance Hall in  downtown Rochester, New York and heard Madrigalia, a Chamber Chorus from the city, sing for "A Cup of Good Cheer." The festive music really illuminated the overcast day with a brightness that infected the children listening to this program of Live From Hochstein. As the soaring voices reached the balcony where I was sitting, I saw the children sitting nearby with their heads resting in their arms looking out over the balustrade. One began bouncing energetically during the jazzy rendition of Jingle Bells as the warmth of the seasonal tunes burst forth to resonate with those celebrating the season's joy and hopefulness. Without words, we can express our simple joyfulness and excitement or thoughtfulness that brings us together to connect with the music and tradition of the time. 

During the moments of song over the course of the hourlong concert, the expressions of Christmas were found filling the performance space with wonder and reverence creating and evoking images of the nativity and decorations that adorn edifices this month. Without these expressions at this time for these people the soul could not have been illumined in that way as the collective voices sang out to share the warmth and gladness of a moment of memory that formed before giving way to whatever came next. 

A serene peaceful scene of snow and pine.