shadow sounds of true soul

One day it’s all going to coalesce.

All the pieces will fall into place, and I will finally be free to create the art I’ve always dreamed of making.

That’s how the thoughts come these days, these days holding only snippets of me-time when I get to choose dishes, laundry, email, nap OR… art.  

My pieces lie scattered: A recording system I purchased last summer but don’t know how to use.  An electric piano I rarely touch.  Journals filled with scribblings of poems, set to solfeggio melodies with chords.  Musical connections all over the world.  Thoughts and images floating through my head, scraps and shards, needing some magnetic force to draw them all together. 

I say, I’ll just sit down to the piano for a minute… And seconds later, little hands are clamoring for a turn at the keys, and how can I resist the sweetness of little bodies wanting to fight for my lap to have their turn at music-making, and the wealth of small fingers under mine?  Isn’t this art of a different kind?  Yes, of course, I think, but there is the other waiting in the wings, and part of me aches for grown-up things.  

I listen to CDs of lullabies bequeathed by a friend who’s left the country, and I listen to art made by singers become mommies, and I think, I could do that.  Why don’t I?  It’s all the pieces on the floor, and I just don’t know how to pick them up and put them together.

Wait, says that Quiet Voice.  Just wait.  We’re getting there, you and I.  I do have a plan, you know.  

I sigh.  I do know.  I just find waiting and holding my artistic breath difficult, when there is so much beauty to be created.

I thumb through emails, and come across this in blue, penned thoughtfully by one of my sweetest friends, (a breath-taking singer and a sensitive, brave mommy):

We are writing poems, memories, and songs within the hearts of our children each day, and it is there that perhaps we are the truest recording artists we ever will be, perhaps all the rest is the shadow sounds of true soul we try to capture with our instruments.

And I find my breath returning.  I am suddenly at peace.  It is there, within the hearts of my children each day, that perhaps I am the truest recording artist I will ever be.  And perhaps all the rest is the shadow sounds of true soul.  

My heart aches with truth.  I listen to Jewel’s mesmerizing voice, thankful that a mommy somewhere had all her pieces linked just right to capture these delicious shadow-sounds for my true soul.  

And I catch glimpses of my boys’ hearts growing up with memories and songs recorded on their hearts… making music of their own one day.

{Ben, trying to walk in my shoes}