Musicking
“‘Musicking’ encompasses all musical activity from composing to performing to listening to a Walkman to singing in the shower.” — Christopher Small
SERENADING THE INDO-PORTUGUESE CULTURE & FOLKLORE OF DAMAN
My life’s been a medley of songs:
😃 Happy and upbeat at times
😔 Bluesy and melancholic sometimes
😊 Mellow and mid-tempo most of the time
I thought I’d been two-timing music and writing all these years, but it turns out that instead of being competing rivals, they’ve been collaborating in realtime on the soundtrack of my life:
🎼 Music as the ‘melody’
✍🏼 Writing as the ‘lyric’
🖥️ HR my as the ‘backing’ track that paid the bills
“And three, of course, is the number representing supreme balance, as anyone who has ever studied either the Holy Trinity or a simple barstool can plainly see.” - Elizabeth Gilbert
My track record
Looking back, my track record looks like the first musical thing I played—an LP. I neither ran 🏃 a marathon nor did a sprint—I just grooved along a spiraling 🌀 track at 33rpm, which has taken me forward slowly, but surely.
The first few tracks were the fastest and time seemed slowest.
The middle tracks were mid-tempo and in sync with time.
The remaining tracks are the slowest, yet time seems to be flying.
I do get stuck in a groove occasionally (aka procrastination); but a gentle nudge gets me out of the rut and grooving again.
BTW, you don’t get to play side B—unless you experience an NDE.
Since my mother's passing, I've been grieving 24/7 with just one exception: I feel totally at peace when I'm playing worship piano at church services.
My music journey started in church with my first 'public performance' at age nine — singing the Veronica in Latin — where five of us were 'nominated' and every week one was sent home till the finalist (me) was left to face the music solo!
Looks like I'm back full circle to where it all started — in church.
I didn’t know I was an ‘artist’ until my wife told me so. 🤩
I disagreed, though—but settled for simply being labeled ‘artistic’.
But only then did I comprehend why my parents had nurtured my creativity—music since childhood; writing since my early teens—but music in particular. 🎼 🎸
All those years I’d thought that they’d perceived me as just a wee bit autistic because of ‘the tough time’ I supposedly had at birth—hence the ‘special’ treatment, concessions, and leniency.
I was wrong. They probably sensed that their son was treading the thin, subtle, elusive line that pretended to delineate the ‘u’ on one side from the ‘r’ on the other—because they were artistic too.