Day 99
writing
It is not always the easiest part of my day, or even the most rewarding. But, for the last ninety-nine days, it has been the most exciting part of my life. Even on the days when I barely pulled it off, so distracted, or tired, skeptical, or just over it; I still surprised myself.
It isn’t so much that I have a lot to say, but I am learning how to open up and just let things happen here. It is not so important to be quotable, or original, only to be myself. Each sentence is my teacher, and if it speaks in a voice other than my own, I do not hear it. So, first this practice has taught me to use my own voice, to say things in a way that I will hear them.
I wonder if composers learn of themselves when they make…and then hear…their music. I’d like to think so. To think of Miles, the echo of his trumpet in a room, telling him who and what he is. Nina and her piano. Jimmy and his guitar. Maybe because they were so good at playing as themselves, not mimicking, just expressing themselves—maybe this is why when I hear them, I feel as if I am reading their diaries. I’ve always thought that Little Girl Blue and Kind of Blue were the most intimate pieces of music. Listen to them, headphones, in the dark. There is so much intimacy there.
If I could sing like Nina Simone, or play like Miles Davis; not in the same way, but with the same authenticity and vulnerability, then I would be sitting at a piano right now, or breathing broken-hearted sounds through my trumpet. I am a writer. My voice comes through stories, little metaphors, collections of words that draw pictures in your mind…in my mind.
Tonight, I am in a dark room; the sun has left a purple haze in the sky behind me. I can see it in the reflection off the glass that covers a dark painting on my dining room wall. I am writing. I just heard the first of the nocturnal birds, an owl perhaps, an omen. I am entirely in my element.
