Music again

So i copied my last blog entry to Carol Donaldson who runs the Intergenerational Choir and she replied in part:
"Yes, it's amazing how singing together engenders such good feeling. I think a combination of the physical (deep breathing which oxygenates and calms), the mental (brain busy concentrating on harmonies, so too absorbed to worry about life/ourselves) and the emotional (lovely bonding experience) and sometimes I think we can reach the spiritual, when we're singing a powerful song and there's so much good intent in the room, it does raise us all up."

This last week I have had a profound, and I think spiritual, shift in my piano playing. I had started to get some aches in the muscles of my upper arms (I had these for many months 10 years and nothing - massage, herbal remedies, oils, sacro cranial therapy shifted it and then I dreamt of Peter Mandelson and the aches left me! - If you are interested I'll tell you the whole story some time :)).

I thought 'Oh No, will this stop me learning piano?' So I finally talked about this with Rebecca my piano teacher (I'll blog more about her teaching another time). When I get tense in playing I hit the keys hard - rather like Thelonius Monk but not so good. To avoid getting tense and loud I have to play slower and softer and quieter and I start to relish the music more and notice each note. It then becomes a kind of meditation, I enjoy it more and it relaxes me more and paradoxically it sounds better.

So I am not rushing to play something anymore instead enjoying the indwelling particularly on those pieces I really relish playing. So something is shifting internally in this process and it feels like doing yoga or mediation or Quaker silence.

Isn't life strange? And of course I found that Rebecca has a fascination with the spiritual. Kind of typical synchronicity for me.

Bill-on-bike avoiding the frost spots or walking the bike, but loving the stars - have you seen Venus and Jupiter they were close to the moon a couple of weeks ago, it was magic to me - the wonder of it all!