the music within

In a recent conversation with some friends, someone asked what we would do differently with our lives if we could do it over again. It was actually an easy question for me, as nearly every day I ache over the fact that I don't know how to go about composing music.

I am filled with music. Some of this is released in my writing, some of it in my impromptu dancing (which embarasses my daughter no end), but much more still wants to be released, intact, as music ... and I don't know how to do it. I can read music, and I can write music, but just as putting words on paper doesn't make one a 'writer,' writing music doesn't make one a composer.

How I wish I had stuck with those piano lessons that I quit back in fourth grade! How I wish I had paid more attention to my jazz compositions class in college! How I wish that I had taken music more seriously so as to be able to release the sounds inside of me.

I have this vision of my death ... my body will split open and some of the most beautiful music ever heard will come floating out, along with little animated warm-fuzzies akin to The Beatles' YELLOW SUBMARINE.

Until then, I continue to try, every day, to create music in whatever way that I can.