SPIRITUAL - Xtreme Music

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keep. It’s between my heart, my soul, and the piano I play. Because
I find the piano to be more of a place, rather than an inanimate
object, my sitting on the bench and playing the piano fills me with
the hope, understanding, fulfillment, love, and answers that others
might find in churches, synagogues, mosques, or chapels. While
others meditate, chant, breathe and practice yoga, I play music.
There is no other time when I am more at peace. My time on the
bench is when I commune with all that is greater than myself. It’s
the only place I feel completely understood, free, and whole. And
so I suppose you could say that the act of playing the piano is my
own special spiritual practice.
Of course no one can sustain high levels of spiritual
connectedness all the time, and many of my hours at the piano are
perfunctory and practical. However, the act of composing music is
always a spiritual matter; it involves delving deep into my soul, my
center, and expressing its essence in that moment. There have been
times when I have felt for certain that the music I have composed
had come from someplace else, that I was simply repeating or
reflecting a divine idea from outside of myself. “A Song For Jennie”
began this way.
I was alone in my apartment stirring a big batch of soup. I was
recovering from a case of walking pneumonia and feeling vulnerable,
weak, small. It was dark afternoon and I began to daydream as I
was stirring the soup. Thoughts of my grandmother came to mind.
I was thinking that I should call her, that she was all alone in her
Brooklyn apartment. Having been widowed fifty years before, she
had never remarried and was always alone. Here I was feeling sorry
for myself for being by myself for just a little while; I was in between
roommates. The apartment was too quiet.
My thoughts turned to my grandmother as a young woman,
crossing the Atlantic and making her way to America. She had told
tales of her crossing many times, and each time I learned something
new about her voyage. During my daydream there was a musical
soundtrack, and it consisted of twenty-one oddly placed notes in a
strange rhythm, all in the middle section of the piano. Even after