Music soothes the savage breast

Last night, I went with a friend (the same one who got me a ticket to the Eric Bibb concert last month) to see the movie "Walk The Line", the extraordinary biopic of the struggles, successes and failures of Johnny Cash. Like the concert, it moved me emotionally, and spiritually. It took me back in time, and it took me inside myself. I'm finding that music, more and more, speaks to me in a way I've never listened. I have a collection of about 15,000 vinyl record albums, and they're all in storage. Most of my life, my hobbies have been collecting things just for the sake of having a collection. This morning I started to haul it out from the dark recesses where it's been packed away for the last 8 years or so. I'm feeling like I used to when I was a kid on Christmas Eve, wondering if I'd get a stamp album or a colouring book for Christmas. I'm excited about the music I'm going to start unwrapping.

My friend is very active each year volunteering endless hours for the Edmonton Folk Festival. With the movie, the music, the festival, our friendship all brought together simultaneously I found myself drifting to a parallel existence to the Shelter Valley Folk Festival . Aengus Finnan is the artistic director, and with a lot of help from a lot of friends, has been building it up to be an event not to be missed. I've met Aengus a couple times, through Dave, primarily during their Pearson College days. Pearson College is one in a series of worldwide campuses with a world peace vision, bringing students from around the world to study together. I occasionally hear Aengus' music being played on our local station here in Edmonton, and I keep hoping someday maybe the Edmonton Folk Festival will have him here as talent.

On a different, but related note (sorry for the pun!), honestly, I was so pleased to see the number of comments attached to my last post as I set out on my journey to try and expound on what I think is a different take on the complex and, as yet, unsolved puzzle of my life. As a teacher, I used to dread classes when the students didn't take part, didn't challenge, didn't question, didn't offer alternatives. But equally honestly, the comments on my post all gave me pause for thought that I'm still not starting in the 'right' place. As a former teacher if I get all three students in my class saying "I'm confused", I'd best re-write my lesson plan, or find another job.

So, I went to the movies. And for awhile again, I think maybe I'll just re-work things and slip bits in now and then. In the meantime, I feel like playing.

For the twenty years I was teaching, I started each and every class by writing a "common sense" saying on the upper left corner of the blackboard, and then listed the agenda, or main topics for the class, underneath the quote. Over the years students would bring me their favorite quotes, and would often add theirs to mine, or replace mine if they figured theirs was more a-propos.

For however many days or years my body has left on this planet, it's my intention to surround it and infuse it as much as I'm capable of doing with the mantra of PEACE. Today, I want to introduce a new feature to my entries. In addition to whatever happens to pour forth from my stream of consciousness, I'm going to add a different PEACE-link within each blog entry, as a way of painting my self-portrait.

So today, if you like, you can join with a Circle of Friends; an interfaith fellowship of churches of all faiths in nations all over the world.

Music. PEACE. Generations. Faith. Education. Family. It's all related in so many ways.

Lest ye think I meant to say 'beast' instead of 'breast' in my topic line today, I didn't. In wordplay, the beast is contained within the breast, and the rest is at rest for awhile.

Play on -Words. -Music. -Tennis. -Life. Play on.

After church, have a fun round of tennis if you like. (Best scores can be added as comments here if you're feeling truly competitive!!)


If in the end it turns out that we must build walls instead of just drawing lines, here's the wall I'll help mortar. With cement, not mortars.

PEACE and TOLERANCE
to you all
with a stereophonic,
musical background
blasting away!

Posted by Evydense on Wednesday, February 22, 2006 at 1:55 p.m. | Permalink