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WHY THIS BLOG and WHAT TO EXPECT:
For many years I have had the following quote hanging in my studio "Music is what feelings sound like." This sentiment is so true in my life. At times, I have had difficulties expressing and sharing feelings with loved ones and friends, but a poignant song was a gateway to identifying and expressing wonderful and difficult emotions. Although I have lost count, I have written over 1000 songs, yet I still possess a strong urge to compose and produce new music. This blog, aptly named "Everything is Music," will allow me to share one of my original songs each week based on an important emotion. Songs will reflect happy, sad, fearful, and angry feelings. This weekly endeavor will be similar to my last blog, House of Light. It will include quotes, poems, cartoons, pictures, articles, videos, and anything else I deem necessary to highlight the week's emotion. Finally, I'm anxious to hear from you, the readers. See below for more details.
A FEW GOOD QUOTES:
- "Don't worry about saving these songs! And if one of our instruments breaks, it doesn't matter. We have fallen into the place where everything is music. The strumming and the flute notes rise into the atmosphere, and even if the whole world's harps should burn up, there will still be hidden instruments playing" - Rumi (13th century Persian poet)
- "You can have the sense that there is a condition inside you which looks at the stars with amazement and awe. That listens to water with a river flowing, or water falling in rain and is lifted up by that and listens to a wonderful singer, wonderful musicians, listens to maybe Duke Ellington or Frank Sinatra or listens to Odetta and Mary J. Blige. Yes, and thinks whoo! And thinks, yes, hmm, all right now. My soul has been washed. I feel better, I feel stronger." - Maya Angelou
- "I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, 'This is what it is to be happy.'" - Sylvia Plath
- "I flamed amazement." - William Shakespeare
- "I have a dream of beauty at which one might look at all one's life and sigh." - Isabella Bird on visiting the Rocky Mountains in the 1870s'.
- "Music is what feelings sound like out loud." Georgia Cates, "Beauty from Pain."
- "The highest goal that one can achieve is amazement." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A GOOD SONG: "Maybe I'm Amazed" written by Paul McCartney and performed by Norah Jones and Dave Grohl (Paul McCartney Tribute) - 2010 Kennedy Center Honors LINK
A GOOD VIDEO: A wonderful video of the national park that inspired this song. LINK
*A GOOD POEM: "I was a bride married to amazement."
When death comes by Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
From “New and Selected Poems” (Beacon Press: $20; 255 pp.), reviewed on this page. 1992 by Mary Oliver.
A GOOD BOOK: "Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers" by Anne Lamott LINK
A GOOD ARTICLE: "Music is what feelings sound like" LINK
A FEW GOOD RESOURCES:
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The Emotion Wheel: What It Is and How to Use It LINK
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Emotion of the Week website: a way for parents and teachers to teach emotional literacy. LINK
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