Music Marathon

 

                                    “Let the beauty we love be what we do.”

-       Rumi

Four hour-long classes with 7^th and 8^th graders at the Children’s Day School. Drive to the Jewish Home for the Aged and play piano for 1 ½ hours. Quick dinner at home and drive to The Sequoias Center for Senior Living to watch my film with some 60 residents and then discuss it after with a Q & A and a promise to come back next week to sing songs with them. 

 

The next day, play for an hour at SIP Tea Room, background Holiday Music while people enjoy tea and scones. Quick lunch and back for another hour. At the end of each, I invite 30  strangers to sing one of the songs together with me— and they do! Drop in on a neighborhood gathering and play some guitar with some five musicians. Back to the SIP Tea Room for another hour of music-making with Ms. Claus and lead some songs with the parents and kids dining there. 

 

In short, in the past two days, I've played music at five different venues with some 250 people of all ages (most of whom I didn’t know) for some seven hours of music-making one day and four the next. By all reckonings, I should have been exhausted. But I wasn't. In fact, wholly energized. 

 

That’s what music can do. It's the gift that keeps on giving. It’s an underground spring that cleanses and refreshes and brings life and vigor to all it touches. It’s a way to connect with people you've just met unlike any other. It’s the beauty I love. It’s what I do. Rumi affirms my good fortune, a movie title, my hope—“Happy. Thank You. More Please.”The World seems to agree, as opportunities keep pouring in and I says to every one. 

My upstairs neighbors gone and thus, evening curfew lifted, I can even play a bit of piano at 10:30 at night to properly close the day. And so I do.