I’ll be honest here: I was having a brain fart. Or a writer’s block. Or something.

So, I put on my music and considered writing a poem instead. But when opening Word, I glimpsed a poem I wrote on December 20, 2016. I opened “The musical river” and read it. Reading that spawned another idea, which led me to my blog and prompted me to write the following words: “I’m still not quite sure how I want to get a point across. So for now, I have another exercise.”

Well, let me just take it from there, because my writer’s block went away.

If you would, go to iTunes or Spotify or YouTube and pick your favorite song to listen to. And I mean, a song that really, really gets you — every single time you listen to it. (If you’re at a loss for a song, here’s one from The Piano Guys.)

Now, lose yourself… in the music, the moment…

***

The musical river

One musical note
doesn’t seem like much —
as a single drop of water
doesn’t amount to much.

Perhaps this note is a B flat
or a C sharp —
and perhaps this drop of water
falls from the faucet
or drops from the sky.

On its own,
that one musical note
seems lonely and without context —
and the drop of water
seems small and insignificant.

But when that one tone
is followed by other individual tones —
and when that drop of water
is joined by more beads of water —

together they define a new creation.

The musical notes
support each other,
lead each other,
pushing forward with a sense
of purpose and perseverance —
as the drops of water
join together to become
a single entity
that flows with elegant determination,
until, at last,

the end of a new masterpiece.

***

I’ve been thinking a lot about trust recently. In fact, I’ve been thinking about trust for the past couple of months. And when I thought of trust, my thoughts turned to trust falls. I’m sure you all know what a trust fall is, but just in case:

Trust is scary. That moment you choose to let yourself fall is a moment when you place complete control into the hands of someone else. You trust that person to ignore surrounding distractions and catch you, support you.

So, these thoughts were lingering in my mind, when I turned on my music and read this poem again. That’s when the following thoughts passed through my mind: Each musical note does a trust fall into the next one. Without the next note to catch the one before it, the music ceases to be.

The musical notes in your favorite song rely on each other to create the final outcome. Without that trust, their existence and ultimate purpose would be undetermined and meaningless.

I’ll let you ruminate on that thought for a bit.