Coming up for Air

I drove home yesterday listening to my favorite radio station when I all of a sudden had my eyes filling up with tears and an enormous feeling of emptiness flooded through me. Being winter, and the roads as one could expect, I wasn't really happy about the blurry vision but since I was almost home I continued to drive while trying to figure out why the tears were rolling down my face.

Of course, Air. Bach was an early acquaintance of mine. He often is, if you play the flute. And Air is one of the pieces I was so very proud to have mastered once. Of course, then it was the solo of one of the worst funerals I have gone to (if there is such a word, maybe all funerals are hard for the people who are family and close friends?). Anyway, it was a dark church, a morose day in the fall when the skies never falter to be just that dull grey with no hope of either snow nor sun. And in the middle of the service the flute started to play this magnificent piece while the loss and the loneliness of the remaining family was so very obvious for people to see and feel. I don't think I was that young but surely a bit naïve and unexperienced in life, but it was definitely one of the experiences that ended up lingering inside me.

For a few years I didn't get the opportunity to perform Bach - I'd moved into earlier music (Händel comes to mind) - and the memory faded... until of course, I get surprised by it and it sneaks into my ears and heart and reminds my little tear channels to start leaking.

This was supposed to be a happy ending (after all, that's what most people strive for - right?) so I can happily tell that after the piece was done and I sat there in my car drying the tears from my eyes and cheeks, I felt better. It's sometimes like that for me, a good cry and then move on and be done with it. I guess if I was a scientist in the earlier times I'd be on board with the whole "people consist of different fluids that need to be in balance". Although, for me it would be more likely to be recommending a "good cry" than a "bleeding" ;)