Author Joan Warren: Poetry – Musical Gratitude

Thank you, composers of today
for creating as you do – NOW –
uniquely expressing and feeling
the life of today.
Thank you, composers of yesterday
for creating as you did – NOW –
uniquely expressing and feeling
the life of your day.
I’m grateful for my ears and heart
that I may listen and hear,
both today and yesterday –
the beauty of a timeless NOW.
Thank you for yesterday and today,
for the cohesive continuity
of sound and silence,
put together in a combination of
careful choosing to create music.

Note: My instructor requested I remain at the end of class.
During this discussion, he commented that it was clear that I disliked, hated modern-day music. He was surprised I called it music. I love the classics, but I was surprised he picked up the tone from my words.

He then stated he had expected from me heated comments regarding the deliberate disharmony found in modern music, the nosy and rank sounds of our current days. He gave me an ‘A’ for originality, integrity, and honesty, plus amusement, and we both laughed.
Today’s version.

Gratitude For Music, Healing Music

Thank you, composers
and musicians of today.
Creating rippling tones and beats
of silence in between.
Combining pitch and harmony,
beat and rhythm
into cohesive continuity with
vibration waves of sound
into the NOW.
Thank you, composers,
and musicians for the
rhythmic harmony piercing through
the outer shell –
and the body responding.
Gratitude of the mind soars from within
and the heart follows.
Rhythm and vibrations lift the energy
healing the present.
Sounds governed by
the principles of physics.
Pitch and timbre,
fundamental frequency –
the foundation of music – science.
At the heart of physics, music
the waves – an energy –
carrying vibrations –
lifting nature’s vibrations, stirring healing.

MEMORY STORY

1950 – I am fifteen, full of the energy of youth and the excitement of experience.I joined a group of my parents’ friends at the Castle Loma in Toronto, Ontario. While sitting at the table listening to the hearty discussions, I took off my shoes and hid them under the table. My feet were hurting as I was unaccustomed to dress shoes.

George, a young friend, merely ten years my senior and full of mischief, asked me to dance. I accepted. I didn’t know he was aware of my bare feet and had taken one of my shoes and placed
it on the mantelpiece of the enormous fireplace on the far side of the polished wooden dance floor.

I frantically searched for my other shoe under the table and finally gave up, agreeing to go onto the dance floor with my bare feet. I didn’t have a clue as to what was going to happen.

As we started to dance, I gasped in surprise; I could feel a beat, a rhythm, a vibration through my feet coming from the wooden floor as the orchestra played a foxtrot, a musical dance beat and step I knew.

I was suddenly dancing on air, feeling and moving to music like I had never done before. It was exciting and exhilarating. George was an expert dancer, and he took advantage of this unexpected opportunity. Our dancing attracted the attention of other dancers on the floor, and the next thing I knew, I was dancing in a space created for the two of us, with people watching.

I suddenly saw my shoe sitting on the mantle, and I froze in humiliation. The fact that the mood was broken, and I was young and shy humiliation and embarrassment took charge. I returned to the table and refused to dance again that night.

Now – today – I laugh with glee. I watch Dancing with the Stars on TV and smile. I once had that wonderful experience.

An awareness stays with me. Music can, under the right circumstances, be felt through the feet or skin and not necessarily through the ears called hearing. The beautiful music of the band musicians caused a vibration reaction to be felt and acknowledged through the polished wood of the dance floor.