Mozart's Piano Concerto in G Major

Yes. I did Bound Lotus today, and I do have more to say...

I've listened to the Ray Man Shabd. I've listened to Jacqueline du Pre's playing of Camille Saint-Saens "The Swan", and "Albinoni's Adagio". I think of Krystof Kozlowski's movie "Blue", from the Three Colors Trilogy. The flute player playing the remnant lines of a grieving woman's husband's piano composition on the street outside her window, and how it heals her soul. The movie was made around the time of the Siege of Sarajevo. The movie is a favorite of mine, and is deeply uplifting IF you watch it all the way through, and pay attention. IF.

Music can heal deep wounds. It can inspire, in a way that spoken language, and even comforting words cannot. This is what the cellist of Sarajevo was doing:

"When Kenan was told of what the cellist was doing, he didn't say anything but thought it was a bit silly, a bit maudlin. What could the man possibly hope to accomplish by playing music in the street? It wouldn't bring anyone back from the dead, wouldn't feed anyone, wouldn't replace one brick. It was a foolish gesture, he thought, a pointless exercise in futility.

"None of this matters to Kenan anymore. He stares at the cellist, and feels himself relax as the music seeps into him. He watches as the cellist's hair smoothes itself out, his beard disappears. A dirty tuxedo becomes clean, shoes polished bright as mirrors. Kenan hasn't heard the cellist's tune before, but he knows it anyway, its notes familiar and full of pride, a young boy in a new coat holding his father's hand as he walks down a winter street.

"The building behind the cellist repairs itself. The scars of bullets and shrapnel are covered by plaster and paint, and windows reassemble, clarify, and sparkle as the sun reflects off glass. The cobblestones of the road set themselves straight. Around him people stand up taller, their faces put on weight and color. Clothes gain lost thread, brighten, smooth out their wrinkles.

"Kenan watches as his city heals itself around him. The cellist continues to play, and Kenan knows what he will do now. He will walk up the street to his apartment. He'll take the stairs two at a time, not even breathing fast, and throw open his door. Amila will be surprised to see him, and he'll grab her and kiss her, like he used to do when they were much younger. He'll run his fingers through her hair, thick and the color of honey." (pps 186-187)

There is, as Temple Grandin states in "Animals in Translation", a connection between music and language. Music is a way of communicating beyond what language can say...the naad, the sound current, is universal. It is a universal language. The aborigines believe the universe was sung into being. In C.S. Lewis' "The Narnia Stories", Aslan the lion sings the world into being. Even in Winter, I hear the birds singing from my rooftop in the early morning, and I smile. Birds, speaking in the language of music, sing each day into being.

Maybe animals know more about how to be 'human' than we do.

In her chapter on 'How Animals Think', Temple Grandin reflects:

"Animals are the originators of music and the true instructors. Humans probably learned music from animals, most likely from birds. More evidence that humans copied music from birds, rather than reinventing it for themselves: only 11 percent of all primate species sing songs.

"Mozart was definitely influenced by birdsong. He owned a pet starling, and in his notebooks he recorded a passage from the Piano Concerto in G Major as he had written it, and as his pet starling had revised it. The bird had changed the sharps to flats. Mozart wrote, "That was beautiful" next to the starling's version. When his starling died, Mozart sang hymns beside it's grave and read a poem he had written for the bird. His next composition, "A Musical Joke," has a starling style. If a musical genius like Mozart admired and learned from a bird, it seems extremely likely early humans learned from birds when they were inventing the first human music.

"...Birds compose songs that use the same variation in rhythms and pitch relationships as human musicians, and can also transpose their songs into a different musical key. Birds use accelerandos, crescendos, and diminuendos, as well as many of the same scales composers use all over the world.

"...Ordinary song sparrows compose and sing sonatas," she says.

"Luis Baptista, curator and chairman of the Department of Ornithology and Mammalogy at the California Academy of Sciences until his death in 2002, has a tape of a white-breasted wood wren in Mexico singing the exact opening notes of Beethoven's Fifth." (pps 278-279)

Music is created through intelligence, but has the capacity to transcend the limitations of intelligence and move us into our hearts and out of our heads. While I struggle through winter, I find myself deciding not to be angry with the birds left in St. Louis for pooping on my car, and to smile when I hear them sing. Their voices foresee the coming of Spring, and are part of what gives me hope that I will finish 90 days of Bound Lotus, and the 40 days to process White Tantric. On Groundhog's Day, will there be another six weeks filled with sounds heal my soul?