My husband Dave and I are leaving tomorrow for a weeklong Thanksgiving trip which includes a Broadway show during a 4-day stay in New York, and a visit with his sister Beth and her family outside of Philadelphia.  As the packing frenzy ends, I feel thankful — a nod to this time of year — that I found the Tao Te Ching.

Before I had read anything related to Eastern philosphy, I was a self-acknowledged “control freak”.  I gripped every musical phrase tightly in my pianist hands, because, of course, they all belonged to me, and were totally about me.  They were there to make me the complete artist/musician…if only they understood that.  But, if I squeezed them tightly enough, I knew they would get the picture.

Eventually, I began to see the truth: that the music really belonged to the Creator, the Visionary, who knew what it was long before I was thought of, and that I was merely the vessel.  I found out about a book which explained “the way”, the true process, about eight years ago…Tao Te Ching should probably be required reading for anyone who wants to co-exist with the process of life and everyday productivity, without choking the life out of it.

I learned that, in order for me to really be in control, I needed to live in the moment, and have the most physical options.  And, for me to have the most options of any movement, I had to loosen my grip on things.  This was such a foriegn concept to me.  I had been such a tense pianist for much of my playing career…but I realized that I had to let go, and let the natural laws of things take over.  Things had to feel natural in order to be “right”….they had to be logical, and true.

Once they started to “click”, it changed the way I looked at everything in my life.  I realized that things didn’t have to be good or bad, they just had to be in line with what was natural or unnatural.  I started to relax more, and was a lot happier because it took a lot of the burden and tension off of me.

As I am working on my new CD literature, I see that the tendency to try to “control” phrases occasionally creeps in…but I am loosening the grip…and then gaining the control….

More notes from my corner of the planet later…Christine