When I wear my holey tights...

This past week during my lesson my teacher told me I needed to be more like a child when I played the flute. She said that musicians must be an adult and a child at the same time. If we are not children while we play music, then everything becomes predictable and boring. She told me I must look at the things around me through the eyes of a child...develop my imagination.

Little did she know that all day long I had been thinking about my secret. The secret of the hole in my tights. When I wear my holey tights, I am an 8-year-old girl making her way back home after an afternoon of frolicking through the prairie grass. When I wear my holey tights, I am 14 years old, helping mom with the weekend chores while I eat a big juicy red apple from my backyard apple tree. When I wear my holey tights, I am a kindergartner on her first day of school, desperately trying to find another little girl to whisper secrets to about the cute boy sitting across from her. When I wear my holey tights I'm...Rebecca. Because the idea of holey tights fits so well with a name like "Rebecca."

Maybe next week I'll try to describe my holey tights' characters in my music. After all, one can only keep a secret for so long before she must be vulnerable and blurt it out.

A composer successfully remembered

This excerpt from C.M. v Weber's Op. 28 is drawn in pencil on one of the practice room walls at the Grieg Academy. I sat there staring at it for probably about 10 minutes. I tried to imagine the whole story behind the person who drew it. I bet it was a cellist. Cellists are often the most passionate musicians in an orchestra, and therefore the most likely to get so obsessed with a single line of music to spend hours meticulously drawing it on the wall. And I bet this cellist had stayed in this room until 2 am, studying op. 28, and finally with a sudden outburst cried, "I must write out this beautiful line on the wall so everyone who comes in here can be reminded of von Weber's brilliance!" Well I suppose he succeeded...with me at least.

"The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be brought low"

Last weekend I went to Narnia. O.k., it was technically this tourist trip called "Norway in a nutshell," but I didn't care. I stepped onto the train, anxiously awaiting the adventure before me where I would at last come face to face with some of the most beautiful scenery in all the world. First stop: The small town of Myrdal.

This next smaller train brought us deeper and deeper into the fjords, mysteriously giving us a glimpse here and there of the beauty to come.

The train stopped in the middle of the tracks so we could all gaze on a gigantic waterfall. We all ran to the nearest door in order to get the "best" picture to bring home to our families. The pouring rain didn't seem to stop anyone.

Well, maybe a few...

The next leg of the trip was on a ferry that went through the fjords...the part where the glory of God is Unmistakable. Overwhelming. Fearful. The kind of fear that goes beyond awe. The kind of fear that makes your realize on a deeper level just how small you are, and just how big God is. A conviction that, if forgotten for even a moment, will sooner or later bring you to your knees once again.

The creeks--Tinker and Carvin's--are an active mystery, fresh every minute. Theirs is the mystery of the continuous creation and all that providence implies: the uncertainty of vision, the horror of the fixed, the dissolution of the present, the intricacy of beauty, the pressure of fecundity, the elusiveness of the free, and the flawed nature of perfection. The mountains--Tinker and Brushy, McAfee's Knob and Dead Man--are a passive mystery, the oldest of all. Theirs is the one simple mystery of creation from nothing, of matter itself, anything at all, the given. Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will. The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live there. But the mountains are home.

-"Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" by Annie Dillard

When I was not drinking in the mountains, I watched the people--their reactions, their peaceful state, their artistic expression, and the lines in their faces that spoke of a deeper understanding of the eternal.

"Be still and know that I am God."