Church of Trees
If you are a regular reader, you know that love music. Music moves me. There are days that I get out of bed with a vague gloom surrounding me, even though nothing has changed since the moment my head hit the pillow the night before. Sometimes, just getting busy lifts the fog … sometimes writing does the trick. But other times, the gloom follows me like my own little black cloud, even though I’m aware that the the world outside isn’t gloomy at all. Some happy or uplifting music may drive the cloud away. It is my nature to hide sorrow under a cloak of anger or bitterness and I have found that listening to sad music allows me to throw off that cloak, albeit at the unwelcome price of tears. And an agitated mind, paralyzed by the mountain of too much to do, can often be freed by something quiet, some DeBussy, perhaps.
Some years ago, during a particularly tempestuous time in my life, I took to listening to so-called New Age music to calm my soul. I probably accumulated several dozen CDs, mostly collections from New Age labels like Narada, Windham Hill and Higher Octave. Perhaps the music worked because the tempest passed and I moved on musically. Occasionally, I go back and listen to some of the music I depended on then, and truthfully, much of it isn’t very interesting. Perhaps musical boredom calms the troubled soul. But there are exceptions, artists that transcend the genre, often touching the edges of jazz or classical music. For me, one of those artists is pianist Liz Story. A number of her recordings travel with me and several her pieces made my Bud’s Pianos playlist. One of them is particularly appropriate for this glorious winter Sunday in Yorba Regional Park, where I’m writing this post. Under the trees with the sun filtering through the leaves is often my sanctuary. Welcome to my Church of Trees.
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Older Eyes 
December 2, 2013 at 8:18 am
There are many of your posts that give me pause and I think we are either distant, long-lost relatives or we both suffer from the same mental delusional thinking. Not sure which applies there, Bud. But I can relate to the music being a helpmate at times. Saturday and yesterday, it would have been helpful to me. Unfortunately, my entire stash of cds and tape cassettes have gone amongst the missing and of course, as usual, no one has touched them, no one has a clue as to where they might be now! And then these same people wonder why I get irritated and agitated! Go figure, huh?
December 3, 2013 at 10:39 pm
Jeni, I sometimes use an online radio station called Jango. It’s free. You can select a performer and it will play music by that person and similar performers. It’s quite good.