I’d touched a harp when I was little. I’d had a few lessons, like I had a few piano and guitar lessons. But I always thought of myself as a composer – never as a player.
Then there was one day when I was about 14, when I looked at my hands, standing in the lunchline, and thought of how it felt to connect them to strings.
Open and close, thumb leaving chords that don’t exist. Playing the instrument that isn’t there yet.
How often do we walk away from the experience that isn’t there yet? From the connection we could have to a part of ourselves — the part that an instrument, or a skill, or an expression of art gives us?
These are doorways into ourselves. The doors we often think are locked.
But they’re not.
Wow I love this blog! It’s so true! <3 Love your harp playing!
My dad used to always sing the little old man who wasn’t there. It’s one of my strongest childhood memories. You know the one at the top of the stairs.
I have spent an amazing (to me, anyway) amount of time playing a piano that isn’t actually here, just because I wanted to join in with what I was hearing at the moment.
You know what?? I think I’ve heard you. Yes! I definitely have!