During the week Deborah and I attend classes at an inner life school called The Life of Learning Foundation, founded by author Guy Finley. After every class, we walk away grateful for all that we learn and share there with our fellow students. At each class, after Guy has finished speaking, students perform music for the class, and recently one student has been playing a piano piece that never fails to bring me to tears.
The piece is called "River Flows In You", originally composed and played by a Korean artist named Yiruma. Here's a link to him performing the song (click on the title below). Listen to it.
The piece touches me in so many ways. It is at times light and happy, warming me and making me smile. The notes jump and skip playfully, like water rushing over rocks, making me laugh like a little boy. Then at other times, it slows and is reflective - inviting me to also slow down and to be still. And its ending seems a little sad, as if the river - once free to go and do whatever it pleased - on entering the larger sea mourns its "death", its loss of freedom. The song, as another student said last night, encompasses everything: birth, life, happiness, sadness, death, renewal. I'm humbled and grateful by the gift the composer, Yiruma, has given us. Such creativity!
I wanted to write about this song, not so much because I wanted to understand it. The beauty and joy I experience listening to it is because of what I feel, not what I think about it. So I want to be careful and not analyze it too much.
I think what I wanted most was to just share it. I also wanted to remember, that beauty, like the river, is always around me. Often I miss Life's beautiful moments because I'm caught up in my own small thoughts and plans. And when I see or hear something beautiful - when I'm touched - it's because that same beauty is already inside of me. Waiting to be touched by me. Inviting me into a world larger than the one of my thoughts. I hope my heart will be open more often to the invitations...
"Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends." (Alphonse deLamartine)
Jon~
ReplyDeleteThat song is beautiful. I wish it would have been played when we were there last week. Lovely. I like what you said about being touched by something beautiful because that beauty is already inside. So true.
Amy