Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets,
for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.
Ludwig van Beethoven

I am writing to Beethoven this morning. This is not a thank-you a letter. This is a love song. An ode to joy. A benediction. A grace.

I am writing while his music plays softly in my ears, a melody of grace, a song of love, an ode filled with joy.

I am writing to Beethoven and to Grieg and Mozart and Pachelbel and Satie and others. I am writing to my step-son and my daughter and to the 30 million piano students in China. I am writing to musicians everywhere. They hear the music and set it free. Thank you.

Thank you for bringing music alive. For writing the notes that play on and on. Thank you for stirring the hearts and souls of mankind over the generations that still today, your notes ring true. Your sounds are pure. Your songs continue.

I got inspired by Mozart and Beethoven and musicians everywhere this morning. Hadn’t intended to but as I opened my Youtube Favourites list to access my morning meditation piece, I noticed a new video by The Piano Guys.  Kung Fu Piano: Cello Ascends. Being a lover of cello, piano and The Piano Guys music, I had to click.

I’m glad I did.

Imagine, The Great Wall of China. A millennium old fortification made of stone, brick, tamped earth, wood, and other materials, that stretches along in a primarily east to west direction of the northern states of China. It was a wall designed to keep marauders out.  It also kept people in. It kept their stories, their history, their culture protected outsiders, exposed only to evolution from within.  (source: Wikipedia)

Imagine this great wall that dates back in places to  220–206 BC, stretched out like a giant undulating snake through forest and over hillsides, along valleys and deserts, connected to itself, with serpentine tributaries that deke in and out and along its spine for over what is estimated to be almost 5,000 miles. Locking in. Locking out the world within and beyond. Imagine, the human effort to create such an incredible piece of architecture, of history. The sheer force and will it took to build it up, step by step, brick by brick, stone by stone. The lives invested. The lives lost.

Now, imagine along its back a beautiful grand piano set upon the stone work that was placed somewhere perhaps between the years 1368–1644 AD, during the Ming Dynasty rule. A man, white, Caucasian, dressed in traditional Chinese peasant garb black top, white pants,  sits in front of the piano and plays. At the far side of the piano another man sits on a stool, a beautiful gleaming cherry wood cello rests between his legs. He is clad in white top, black pants. The Yin and Yang in motion, in music, in song. He too is Caucasian. His eyes are closed, his body flows with every note he plays, together, in concert, sitting here on the ledge of The Great Wall of China.

I got inspired this morning by music. It does that. Music. It lifts me up, opens me up, sets me up to flow into the muse, with her and amongst her songs, rising on the notes she plays all around calling me to explore, to let go, to create.

I couldn’t help myself. I had to listen and watch and lose myself in the music and sights and wonder of this feat of not only playing on the Great Wall of China but of wondering, how did they get the piano up there? What did it take? Not just the physical act of moving it up there, but the paperwork, the logistics, the commitment to getting it done.

And then, I followed the music to another video, The Piano Guys live concert in Red Butte Gardens where they play in concert with the Lyceum Orchestra (comprised of youth 13 – 18 yrs of age). In this piece they stitch together 4 movements from Beethoven’s 5th Symphony with pieces of OneReplubic’s, “Secrets“.

I got chills. I wanted to get up and dance, to cheer, to laugh, to celebrate as the music swelled over and in and all around me.

Ah, the muse is alive and well and flowing amongst us. She is everywhere. All we have to do to know her, to feel her, to be one with her secrets is open our hearts, expand our  minds and breathe into the wonder and awe of the music everywhere.

All we have to do is listen to the beat of our hearts pounding out the secrets about who we. The truth is written in the music of our hearts beating wildly in love with our human condition. We are magnificent. Miracles of life. Wonders of the world. We are divine.

Namaste.