an artist aging | reverse threading

“tonight while the lights are shining
and the microphone is on, i’ll play for you…” (seals and crofts)

or no lights.

a piano perched among the boulders looking out toward the mountain range – in this very special place. a boom mic.

in my dreams, i can see it.

the bigrocks are seats and the program is not written. it all comes from the spirit in this place, from air, from healing. and – even more specifically in my dream – a yamaha disklavier pro minus the fancy-schmancy newfangled stuff – an instrument to record directly to disk…on-the-fly on-tape, in the vernacular.

in my dreams – in my regaining of feeling relevant – my fight to regain relevance – as a 65 year-old recording artist who broke both wrists snowboarding and then tore my scapholunate ligament (leaving me with a rh grand total of 45° forward rom) – i am sitting at C7 pros all over – in fields of boulders, in canyonlands, perched on mesas, in meadows of wildflowers, on a cool sand beach. i am playing the boulderfield, the canyonland, the mesa, the meadow, the beach. it is a conversation between us – even, maybe – through me. it is simply an offering to anyone – or any one – who wishes to listen. it’s a dream awash in unlikelihood but with maybe-just-maybe the smallest iota of possible. maybe we can make it happen.

i stood – again – on the most obvious rock from which to bow to my invisible audience. and i bowed low.

because sound or not, there is music. sheet music or not, there is composing. audience or not, there is listening. it is all happening – simultaneously. right there. in that place.

the boulders on the grassy knoll know it. and i can see it.

“i’ve practiced many years
and i have come a long, long way just to play for you…
my life is but a song
i have written in many ways, just to say to you…”

*****