Daydream – on singing my song

I daydream. A few of my daydreams are attempts to escape what’s right in front of me. Most of them are my imagination calling out to the rest of me to join in with something beautiful.

Improvising is a form of daydreaming. In it, the conscious and subconscious mind unite to create the improvisational expression. No wonder I love improv so much.

Words

I often find that whatever words I can conjure are inadequate to express what I sense, think, and feel. One result is that I often turn to music — especially piano improvisation — to find that mode of expression. But you know that unless this is your first visit here.

Words scare me. They are so easily misunderstood. They are so ineloquently insufficient.

Oh, sure: I know some people who are magical with words. Writers like Brenna Layne surprise me with their ease and vulnerability in using words to express who they are. Songwriters such as David Wilcox mystify my imagination with the magic of their lyrics.

Breaking and Bringing Together

My personal history has (too) many stories of verbal misunderstandings. And not just the lightweight ones, but those that destroy relationships. Like a PTSD survivor, I have had to teach myself to not anticipate the vagaries of words. Instead, I seek understanding through common language, curiosity, and taking the risk that human communication requires.

What’s My Daydream?

For years, I thought that my creative pursuit was to have more people listen to my music and read my poetry. When this happened, it would somehow free me from the isolation of being the only what who knows what I express in them.

Thanks to an InterPlay focus/coaching session with Kate Arms, I discovered that this old pursuit is no longer valid for me. My new daydream is that I make music and improvise poetry to be true to myself. Should someone play my music and be moved from raw listening to blissful hearing, that is pure and surprising beauty.

And that’s the trick: hearing is far more than listening. It is reaching for understanding of what the other is communicating whether it’s with words or art or silence. Please listen. Please hear. I think that’s a ton of what our world needs right now.

I am the maker of
Manic and mellow music.
It escapes these fleshly confines
And becomes sound.
I am the instrument.
The world is my song.

“What recurring daydream for 2016 inspires you to do business as unusual like never before?”

This  #quest2016 prompt comes from Scott Barry Kaufman.