- Where magic myth and metaphor collide in a musical celebration called the Perfect Pitch
When you see a blank canvas, as this first step of many blogs most certainly is…what does one do? Part of me just wants to take the entire can of paint and throw it and call it the “expression of a chance movement in time”. It would all be in the wrist action of course, and it would be something to behold. Or, I could go carefully dot to dot painstakingly plotting out the unfolding nature of a musical idea and how it evolved into a full blown extravaganza. Naw. My mind does not work that way.That is not how music happens for me and that is all I have done my entire life on this lovely planet or ours.
It is all about free form and freely flowing ideas as a conversation between player and listener and listener and player – an integration of both participants. So -in this way, I see the brilliance of Ariel’s idea here because just by observing and then participating we are changing it with our point of view.
So here I go trying to share my personal transformation. The challenge to maintain wellness by doing all the things that resonate ( like a pitch vibrating at the perfect frequency) at the cellular level – including living well with proper food, lots of laughter and of course the healing power of music – led me to the revival of The Perfect Pitch and subsequently a profound realization that being mindful and focused moment to moment is a key ingredient to wellness.
Perhaps any meaningful project would have had the same outcome, but in my case, this musical has some magical interventions to show the power of intention and basically slapped me in the face of my own fears and sense of loss.
So what power am I on about? A force where mere words trying to describe it just languish on the left side of the brain. The Greeks knew it all along when they said that music has a way of integrating things internally that the mind cannot. So what I am saying is that there is a power at work that provides us mere mortals with things like laughter and music and, with the proper devotion to it- you yourself may have the power to overcome things like stress and grief in your personal lives.
For what it is worth, my step son Jasper had passed after a dreadful bout with cancer at the age of 24, and shortly thereafter I started getting a bounty of fresh and creative energy every single morning like a download of information that took place while I slept. I began the revival and it has taken me here after two years of non-stop crazy focus and love and steered me away from the pitfalls of my own health challenges into the glory of everyday making things up. So you can call me “Many Blogs”, the perfect pitcher, as I will recount the ups and downs but always the moving forward of the revival and realization of the Perfect Pitch and how it has helped me to become a survivor and hopefully can inspire others.
Chapter one: Goals.
I have to start about 5 years ago before my kid got sick and where I was living the ideal dream in Aspen Colorado with a backyard worthy of a forest-destination resort. I was doing a house cleaning in my studio/office room and was throwing out a great many things including a big notebook from a course I took on goal-setting 20 years earlier, about the same time that my partner and I began making up the Perfect Pitch. And, as the fortunes of luck would have it, the one page that was a long- term goal setting page landed on the very top of the trash can facing upwards. I read the top ten long term goals for everything from relationships to financial security to music accomplishments and I will be damned if I did not nail 95% !!!! so Ariel is dead-on from Chapter one and I quote “Just By Completing This Exercise You Are MUCH
More Likely to Achieve Your Goals.”
So, as I begin this arduous task being quite specific about what is “next” for me, I will close with another quick story about the power of intention.
Many years ago in a Hollywood poster shop I bought a picture of a forest with a little stream and a couple of deer. This picture hung in every bedroom over my bed – every single nite for nearly 30 years. Then, when I was in Old Snowmass, Colorado living in my new house with a backyard of a hundred mighty evergreens fed from 2 mountain streams- I realized that I created this – it was the picture! The power of intention at work over a looooong time but a true triumph nonetheless.
So now, as I battle back from loss (including my kid, my house, my wife, our two dogs, and my prostate cancer) I retake the power of intention as I have moved back to my home in Los Angeles, living in my old bedroom with my mom and dad – both alive at 89 – to be with them in their twilight years and to thrive on the incredible energy of the “why not me” LA vibe- as a cancer survivor and facilitator to bring my story to others in hope of sharing the healing power of my story and my musical- vibrating at the frequency of the Perfect Pitch. Stay tuned.
