Last Monday I created a meditation as a year-end gift for members of Hip Harp Academy.  My goal was to use music from “The Nightingale” with a text I wrote – and to play it in a way that would let them play along, not by ‘knowing’ what I was playing, but by focusing on the feeling of melody in their fingers. 

It’s a way ‘sailing’  on the underlying harmony by letting your fingers play melodic shapes that are natural to your hands.  The only rules are: play only notes in the “C Major” scale, play single notes (not chords), stay above middle C, and don’t judge what you’re playing – don’t even think about it – let your fingers just play over the strings. 

It’s an exercise in practical creativity: a way of physicalizing the ‘role’ of melody, separating it from accompaniment and basslines, and getting a sense of its shape.  

This is what the Hip Harp Academy stands for: the beauty of “being enough” instead of feeling the constant need to ‘get better,’ discovering ways to be creatively resourceful with that ‘enough’ and then allowing it to expand.

Being creatively resourceful is something I learned as a kid. I always had grand ideas – even when I had zero skills or tools – and nobody told me I had to bring my grand ideas to light in a specific way, so I used whatever I had. We all do: a towel becomes a cape, a strainer becomes a helmet.

The difference for me is just that I kept doing that and I fell in love with the suspension of disbelief.

For example, I had a piano, but no lessons. I didn’t even realize that people took lessons to play the piano — no more than they’d take lessons on how to play with paper dolls or pots and pans. So, I created my own magnificent, imaginary world with what I had.

And then, somehow, I ended up with this amazing thing: a harp. A most amazing cape and helmet. The harp has so many ways to be used resourcefully — as long as you can step out of the classical mindset and into the world of being enough.

This sense of enoughness is the essential foundation we foster in the Academy. When people embrace that, they can tap into the tools of creative resourcefulness — everyday creativity, journeyman creativity — and truly allow themselves to use these tools. The magic is that when you engage with them, the tools begin to teach you — through your hands and ears.

But this only happens when you start with: “I am enough. This tool is enough. My skills are enough. This moment is enough.”

When you can stand in that enoughness, everything opens up.

Harpists Who Dare

Ready to liberate yourself from the notes on the page?