Music is Water for the Soul

Music is water for the soul. The many drops of sound all running together to create a harmonious stream pour over the frazzled or gasping psyche and smooth away all the edges that threaten to tear an emotional hole in the fabric of our being.

Sometimes it is a glacial mountain stream, sometimes a reflecting pond, sometimes the drifting arctic snow, sometimes the wild untamed surf of an ocean. Sometimes it is a bath or a steaming hot shower. Occasionally it is a mud puddle to splash into with both feet.

Always it comes with its own liquid grace.

http://piccsy.com/2011/09/water-music/

There is music for every mood, for every emotion, for every soul. Music for pain, for joy, for love, for loneliness, for grief, for exultation, for praise, for heartache, for pensive regret, for soul-wearying exhaustion, for exhilaration, for the dull, plodding everyday and for the once-in-a-lifetime, wish-upon-a-star occasions.

It shapes itself to you. What you need, it will be.

Find the right music and you can change your mood, your mental equilibrium, perhaps even your life.

Author of Light

Author of light, revive my dying spright,
Redeem it from the snares of all-confounding night.
Lord, light me to thy blessed way:
For blind with worldly vain desires I wander as a stray.
Sun and moon, stars and underlights I see,
But all their glorious beams are mists and darkness being compared to thee.

Fountain of health, my soul’s deep wounds recure,
Sweet showers of pity rain, wash my uncleaness pure.
One drop of thy desired grace
The faint and fading heart can raise, and in joy’s bosom place.
Sin and death, hell and tempting fiends may rage; 

But God his own will guard, and their sharp pains and grief in time assuage.

~Thomas Campion 

 

This has been one of my favourite songs since I was about 16. The images of being blind, lost, and wounded resonated with me then and still do. I feel like I'm forever fighting "the old man" "[f]or blind with worldly vain desires I wander as a stray," but am comforted to know that there is a Fountain where I can be truly healed. 

Beginnings

Beginnings are always difficult.

I find it difficult to know how to start off this blog. It takes a bit of courage to make the first mark on a piece of fresh white paper, a bit of daring to throw that pebble into the glassy pond and disturb the water.

I know (sort of) what I will be using it to think about, but I find it difficult to just jump in.
I've been feeling quite pensive and introspective lately, contemplative, and that doesn't make it easier to write "Post Number One."  Contemplation makes me feel I should be profound, but I have nothing really to be profound about, which makes it mere posturing, which I don't think is attractive.

I value honesty, but at the same time don't want to be sharing too much. I'm a private sort of person and while I'd like to share my ideas and and writings and interests, it is quite scary to expose them to the scrutiny and whims of others, even in the relative anonymity of the internet. I share only carefully selected and edited snippets of me, but they are still me. And "me" is a hodge-podge of insecurities and foibles and endless searching for identity.

I could keep a blog of "things", while still never really giving an accurate or even panoramic view of who I am. I could say I am a writer, a sister, a daughter, a teacher, a learner, a singer--oh, any number of titles and skills and states of being, but none of these will truly tell you who I am. I can tell you my age, weight, and shoe size, but you won't have any true understanding of what makes me tick.

It is easy to put on a persona, but not so easy to be real. Being real is scary, is messy, is very, very hard.

I can't promise to always be real on this blog or even to always be completely frank, but I'll try to share a bit of the hope that I've found, the anchor of my soul in all of the rough seas and the tedious doldrums that being real entails.