I was listening to a song in my YouTube music app, and when it finished, a strange thing happened. There was silence. Beautiful silence. And in that moment, I don't know if I'd ever recognized silence as being so beautiful. Like a rush of bliss, with nothing popping up (like an unwanted commercial in the middle of a video that you are immersed in) to obscure it.

Perhaps the reason that this stood out so dramatically, is that I've been fighting the YouTube (et al) gremlins of autoplay for what was beginning to seem like forever. Especially in my car. One song ends, another begins, as I scramble turn off the autoplay (which seems to work for a minute or two, or, at best, until the next time I get in my car). As soon as my bluetooth engages, the music comes; uninvited, unwelcomed. Like when the next door neighbor would start up his motorcycle early in the morning, right outside my window (In those moments, I would seriously consider buying a bb gun), piercing the silence. Perhaps YouTube has trained me to expect this obnoxious behavior once the music is "finished" (provoking me to want to yell at it, or maybe throw something, or actually buy that bb gun), because as silence began to settle in, it was as a beautiful symphony.

Why silence, if music is so central in my life? An interesting question, and one I've been (indirectly) pondering for years, though I've never attempted to make verbal sense of it, rather holding it with internal acceptance. So, here"s a start: In my own experience, in both musical practice and performance, i've learned both to respond to what I hear in my head, and what I "see" with my heart, and to differentiate between the two. And reliably, the deeper spaces are found when I can gaze out beyond my own head. I suppose it's similar, and relatable, to the experience anyone can have in communing with nature; where wonder can enlighten us as concepts fail us. 

There are two responses one can have to silence; either to fill the space/vanquish the silence, or to listen to it. Listening to silence may first appear an oxymoron. So let's rephrase it as being present within the silence. And from there, everything flows. A Christian cleric I once knew was fond of saying: "God's first language is silence. God's second language is music. After that, It's a free for all." To me, there is much about this that rings true.

Listening to a recent livestream of one of my Mainstay First Friday concerts, I heard myself say, on mic: "All of my straight lines are circles". Hearing something come out of my mouth like that can take something from the pondering (understood in my heart) space and deposit it in another part of my brain, allowing me to say, "Yes, of course!", like I just taught myself something. And actually, I have. We can be our own best teachers, once we listen to ourselves after listening beyond ourselves. And having no straight lines can describe (in addition to everything else in my life), my approach to this journal/blog. This results in many posts in progress (aka: unfinished) concurrently. Then, at whatever the right moment winds up being, some inspiration or realization comes, adding the context that brings the previously isolated thought into proper focus. The entry below has been sitting in my drafts for months, waiting to be properly framed. Well, here goes: The last couple of entries in this blog have opened the window (just a little) to my current circumstance of my life, in many regards, being in flux, or perhaps better, suspended above ground. I have no anxiety over this, knowing it is a story being written. As such, I feel the paradox of everything being out of place and disheveled, and being centered in exactly the right place/space.

So this brings me to the musing in my drafts which I knew would eventually find it's way out, and into public view. Now's the time: 

A piano is a welcome sight; friendly, familiar, almost like home. Maybe it actually is home. Actually, of course it is. The piano is where I feel connected. Safe, even. And a portal to beyond. A place to untether. A place to unwind (as I untether). A place to be me. 

The piano is unique among instruments. a place where you can sit, alone, and have access to everything; the highest of highs, the lowest of lows, and a meticulous ordering of what is in between. The piano is where you can sit still, in one place, while at the same time be everywhere, and all at once. The piano is a place of solitude, and of connection (at least for me); with myself, with those around me, with God. The piano is home.

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