Life purpose
The last few weeks have been full of vitality. Thanksgiving weekend, I had an opportunity to play my music, and to create original music at a local store. It was so much fun to come in, set up keyboard and drums,chimes, flute, and then simply create for two hours and also talk with people. So many of us are on a similar creative journey, and it is life-giving to meet new people who share dreams, challenges and their own creativity. At the end of the day the store invited people back for about 30 minutes of drumming. Drumming is energizing for me and it brought all of my creative energy from the performance into a completion. What does this mean? The creative energy from one performance builds into the next, and also opens up all sorts of creative doorways…but only if I totally accept the energy from the performance and allow it to change who I am: my physical body, my emotional self, my spiritual self, and my thoughts. The drumming assisted this process. So does meditation when I get home, and the next day.
The day was simply joyful from beginning to end.
Last week, I also began recording original music for individuals. This is what I love to do most in the musical world, and I am so grateful that I can now compose and record without worrying about taking time away from another
commitment. I also have the focus that I need to be authentic as I compose for another person. Music that is composed for another person’s journey in life requires integrity from the composer, and a total commitment to be completely open to the creative energies, and to the other person’s soul force. It also takes time to feel the music, bring it into my body, and then compose it out in a recording studio. I now have this time.
This week I will go back into the recording studio for five more hours….creating yet more music for another person.
Last night I was watching 60 minutes and they featured a woman pianist named Gabriela Montero. She was a child prodigy in Venezuela…creating music in her crib before she could walk. She was extraordinarily gifted and performed the master’s works with symphony orchestras at an early age. As a young adult, she came to the United States to study.
One of her gifts was the ability to create from any melody in the style of the masters, with depth and passion. Her teacher in the United States questioned her ability, and told her that her composing ability was not important or worthwhile. Gabriela bought into this because her teacher was the expert, dutifully practiced until she was “note perfect”, but she lost her passion for music. She left her music, had two marriages, two children, and tried to live life without music. She couldn’t do it! Finally, she picked up the phone in desperation and connected with Martha Argerich, who many consider one of the most famous pianists in the world. Gabriela ended up playing for Martha at 1:00AM after drinks that evening, and Martha brought the extraordinarily gifted Gabriela back into the passion of her purpose in the music world. Now Gabriela is performing again with major symphonies throughout the world. She has embraced her own particular genius which is uniquely hers. At every performance she plays the masters, but also creates her own original music. When asked by 60 minutes where the music comes from, she said: “My interviews are really short, because I don’t know where the music comes from”. When asked if she sends the music to different places, she replied: ” I don’t really send it. It sends me, you know, the more I get into it. And let’s say, after a few improvisations it just becomes really wild. Something takes over which leads me in some direction.”
This could be the story of my own life (except I’ve only had one marriage and it’s still going strong!). How many artists/musicians have left their primary passion of music or art because they told by the experts that they were not doing it right, or didn’t have enough talent? What a sad thing for our planet Earth to have these musicians and artists silenced.
Also….Over the last few months I have heard so many professional musicians talk about composing music the same way that Gabriela talks about it. They don’t know where it comes from, they can’t direct it or control it, and they are very humbled and grateful that the music comes through them into the world. That is exactly how I feel, except I know that the music I create comes from the unseen spiritual world through me.I don’t know what that is, exactly, but I know how it feels.
To check out the complete interview and see pictures of Gabriela, go to www.cbs.com and click on 60 minutes.