Today’s performance: Ode to Joy
I am a person who is entirely in awe of anyone who can sit down and compose a symphony. And yet, there is one composed and playing right under my nose every single morning………..
I suppose the most handily available and vivid image I have comes from the movie Amadeus, where we see a man sit and work to place down onto paper the music that is playing in his head. The composer must harness, with incredible discipline and focus, his intentions. There is not just a melody – there is the sound of each and every instrument in the orchestra – beats, notes, support, affirmations, echoes, counterbalances and embellishments, as the melody progresses, all designed to perfectly compliment, and each, at the absolute right level of sound. Hmmm, I didn’t get that gene.
These weeks are especially stellar aren’t they? I got to wondering if this time of year might be where someone first got the idea, either instinctively or unconsciously, to write a symphony. Do composers unwittingly mimic what is going on in nature, only by instrument, through sound, or other artists, with a paintbrush or pen? If I were an anthropologist, I might delve here.
Honestly, it’s amazing how easily we can disregard the amount of beauty and change going on outside our doors during these weeks. Each and every morning is an entire new story with change evident to the naked eye in every 24 hour period. Each day is a part of the symphony, each day is a movement. If you let your senses go you might even just feel that you are stepping out into it as it plays out, not once, but every single year in all its glory.
What is astonishing to me is how, for so many years, we are able to take for granted the miraculous parade of events that the power of nature plays out right before our very eyes. Many of us work incredibly hard to compose and invent or recall stories of great magnitude – all the while when right under our noses, perhaps the most profound story of all is unfolding, and seemingly on its own.
Over the past several years I have become more attuned to watching my own little garden, my yard and the creatures that inhabit it. I have found incredible joy and some frustration in this process. But, all in all, I’ve found a great appreciation for what’s going on there. I try to sense when to let things go on as they are and when to step in to embellish and help out. I like to take stock at the little tiny steps that are occurring – the growth of the chives on the table on my patio, the change in the buds on my Clematis Jackmanii, the buds on the dogwoods, and all the “musicians” playing together………
One line, from one page, from one movement:
and from the morning walk with Kit:
I may not be able to write a symphony, but I can listen to one handily – and daily and joyfully……….
Can one possibly overstate such beauty?