Lost

Have you ever turned the sounds around you into music? The sound of the garbage truck, the tappity tap of fingers on a keyboard, the sound of the refrigerator or the furnace turning on? Have these sounds ever called up a whisper of forgotten music, a tune you can’t quite place a name or words to; that makes you wonder – is it some music that someone has already created or did it come from you, from somewhere inside you, all your own tune?

When I was young, I used to call up fiddle music in my head…slow, mournful Celtic airs that I would drift off to sleep to. I never knew where they came from; if they were something remembered or created in my own subconscious. I’ve never really been able to read music, let alone what it would sound like just from looking at it on a page, nor do I play an instrument, but I could call up music within me and my chest would get tight and a knot would form in my stomach…like I was on the edge of a revelation, like one more step would open the flood gates of memories from some long ago time...some time before I was born, before I or my parents or my parents parents were even a thought in the mind of the Universe.

I lost this ability some time ago. I suddenly noticed that I couldn’t do it – the music was done; the band had packed up and moved on to their next venue. It broke my heart that my personal concert was over. But was it really? If I had tapped into this unforeseen ability once, couldn’t I do it again? Couldn’t I find what had changed so drastically in my life that would cause this gift to disappear…and change it back? I have contemplated this over and over, a million times over in the last six years. So many things have happened – the end of a relationship and the subsequent crash of the world you had created as it shattered around you, the loss of one’s self at the end of that relationship, the loss of a loved one, starting over, not knowing how to reclaim what you once were…before it all started.

Last night I caught the whisper of a fiddle tune, just as I was drifting off and it woke me up with a start – a sit up in bed, confused, straining to hear as the whispers fade kind of start. This morning I woke up with a feeling…a change is coming; it’s singing in my soul. It’s making my heart pound faster and louder and that feeling, that revelation…I could reach out and touch it.