Somewhere in my house now a metronome beats 120 beats per minute in 4/4 time. It runs continuously and can’t be turned off, only muted. That’s how it’s designed.
I purchased the metronome when I started playing classical guitar recently. My life is now measured with a rhythm I can’t hear but only know is there, steadily beating on with accented and unaccented notes.
I suppose clocks tick away that way too, but they aren’t designed with music in mind.
When you walk through the front door of my house, the music stand is the first thing you see. If the Chinese system of Feng Shui is correct and our houses are set up along a compass of energy, the energy in my house passes only two things as it flows from my front to my back door: the music on my music stand and the paintings in my back room. Perhaps somewhere along the way I should post some poems as well.
Unlike poetry and painting, music is more standardized. The right hand notes of guitar music are plucked in a certain PIMA pattern, and the left hand presses particular frets. The musical notes and rhythm remain the same, and it is all counted with a metronome.
I am recently unemployed, and music is one of the only things in my life that arrives each day in a predictable manner. Maybe that’s true for everyone. We rise in the morning not knowing what a day may hold. Our bodies change, friends, jobs, finances, homes. It can all change in an instant.
But somewhere for me music is waiting on a music stand. It helps calm down the rattle and chatter in my mind and a general feeling of being disconcerted.
No concert yet, just the warming up of strings, flutes, oboes, horns and distant drums. They clash together, not yet forming music or melody.
And the metronome beats on.
Bluedragonfly10 