As I look out to others to find myself, I do. It seems that my heart convinces my mind with a subtle hum to take up that position and lay on it as time goes by. I see someone’s art and feel as if they described my whole life. I sit and listen to someone’s album and I feel as if they have been watching me since birth. How else can they do something like this, something so random, and yet so familiar to me, someone.

I look Death in the face every day.
He sits upon my shoulder
and I can see him in the mirror.
He no longer frightens me though,
I have grown used to his presence.
As he whispers in my ear
I recall a time it would scare me,
however now it illicits comfort.
Nothing can be permanent,
not even life.
Not anger, not sadness,
nor joy, nor fright.
None of that matters
no one cares, in the end.
So now I tend to consider
Death as a friend

Yes things are stressful,
yes i get bored,
but my friend Death reminds me;
everyone's life is a chore

What is the universal language?
Is it not music? That soothes and amuses,
That inspires us to movement,
That paints a picture of a thousand words,
That when it’s heard, can move us to love.

Music so expressive, it can make you weep
Sounds so smooth, they can help you sleep.
And what about marches that propel armies,
Keeping their feet as one, with the beat?

A beat that throbs deep in your heart
And calls you apart, to dance or to revolution –  
The revolution of the soldier,
Or the revolution of the ballerina’s toes.
Who knows what has been done by the song you have sung
It has called, it has touched, it has moved
Like a bell, it has rung.

But let it love, not hate
Let it not be sung too late
And remember that all can hear it
So draw people near with it

You don’t need a rehearsal
To speak the universal language of music- Just use it!

I’ll Never Be A Virtuoso
(Notes from a Piano Playing/Singer/Poet)

I’ll never be a virtuoso.
Sure as I’m an expert on
My name, my palm – I know it.
So I ponder as I listen to
Michel Petrucciani on piano,
Joe Pass on guitar,
Wayne Shorter on the tenor -
Am I any less an artist sans finesse
If runs, uneven, coarse run out into the sand?
Of course not.
Never to become a virtuoso is my lot.

But I’ve a lot that’s going for me:
Tempos, energy,
Out-coming spontaneity,
Ongoing creativity, ingoing spirit,
And an awfully cheerful personality;
Gifts and graces I don’t even know about,
Waiting to come out – or out.

Noel Coward wrote: ‘the talent to amuse’....
Perhaps I use that talent,
And there’s nothing wrong with that.

My notes are high while not the highest,
Vocabulary not extensive,
Not the most imaginative;
IQ slightly more superior than Pooh’s:
Who cares?
(That’s not a question but an exclamation).
Never virtuoso, I shall be the one
Who wears her brain upon her sleeve,
Her heart her slave.

Somewhat below, above so-so,
I know I’ll never be a virtuoso.
I can live with that.

I’ll Never Be A Virtuoso 5.21.2014 Vaguely About Music II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Pure Nakedness; Arlene Corwin