Tonight I am grateful for minor chords. I have played the guitar since I was 15 years old and have been writing songs for nearly that long (though the first few I wrote at 15 were really bad.) There’s something truly beautiful about the minor chords. They offer a sad, melancholy sort of sound that can be the perfect accompaniment to a blue moment.
Today has been a lower key, minor chords kind of day–not sad or deeply depressed, just slightly blue. This morning I did some much-needed cleaning in my room, mostly trying to find the top of my desk. Though it’s not finished, it looks much better and I’ve promised myself to keep at it until most of the horizontal surfaces in my room are not covered in clutter and are in fact unrecognizably tidy. Wish me luck. I expect to be at it tomorrow morning as well, tackling the largest horizontal surface of them all–the floor in my room.
After cleaning for a few hours I drove Jared to work, took Honor on a quick jaunt around Chavez park (for the first time this week), and came home. Instead of returning to my cleaning, I plopped on the sofa and watched television for a couple of hours. This is pretty unusual for me, but my energy was a little low and I didn’t much feel like doing more than that. After watching the predictable end to an oh-so-predictable romantic comedy, I came upstairs to think about this blog. That’s when I spied my guitar sitting in the corner of my room and decided to play for a few minutes. Today was day two of trying to return to playing every day. I’d fallen off the wagon and decided I needed to get back to playing again before I got too far removed from it.
Tonight was a minor chords night. For a little while I indulged myself by playing a number of songs that put a little of that blue energy to good use. I played a lot of songs from my college days–covers by Janis Ian, one of my favorite angst-filled artists of that time. I could feel the power that often comes when I am in a sort of musical zone. I feel the song, I act the song, I live the song, and when I hear the sound of my own voice it sounds rich and resonant and compelling. If I were playing for an audience while in that zone they would be mesmerized, captive. I don’t mean to sound arrogant; I simply know it to be true. I’ve experienced it–that exchange of energy between performer and audience–both as a performer and as a member of the audience. My favorite songs are those that tell stories, and in fact sometimes I believe myself to be a storyteller as much as a songwriter. The songs are evocative; they invite us to feel, they take us on a journey, they leave us speechless. That’s the power of music.
Tonight here in my room as I look through my open blinds at a mottled, milky, full moon rising I am still feeling the music, though I stopped playing nearly an hour ago. Music lives inside each of us. Sometimes it’s minor chords, sometimes it’s funky major 7th chords, sometimes it’s dissonant augmented chords. But it’s in there, and longs to find expression in some form or another. I am grateful not only to be able to play an instrument and sing, but to allow music to move through me and give my mood a voice. It reminds me that I already carry within me the means to transform whatever I might be feeling and bring me out to a different place. That’s a beautiful thing.
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