The Full Moon of August

I watched Michael Phelps, champion swim racer, pull his way to a seventh gold medal in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing while competing in the individual swim medley. I could barely count or see his strokes, he was moving so fast, and when he pushed off of the pools walls he gained momentum that bounded him ahead setting another world record.

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"There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music." George Eliot

My friend Dave called me and invited me over for a beer, so I dropped into Heaven Gallery (1550 N. Milwaukee). Inside the second gallery space were rows of chairs occupied by patient music lovers facing a cello , a violin, some kind of big xylophone, some microphones and a piano, all in front of the window that faces Milwaukee Ave.

As the musicians tuned their strings in a low cacophony and the audience murmured, I found a place to sit out of the way. The windows were closed and the room became quiet. and the first strings of the performance began with a violin and cello duo called Wild & Wulliman. Their first piece was called Amore Scaduto. Although I had straggled into the performance with an exhausted frame of mind, they commanded my attention from the opening notes. Picture your heart being played like the pulls of a bow to a string, the tension and release of the sound reflecting notes that move your emotions in ways that you can't even being to understand. I soon got lost in the music and began to realize different layers of complexity to all that had been on my mind.

I closed my eyes, and the musicians introduced themselves. The next song was titled Pastor Hick's Farewell, and was sung by the soprano voice of a woman named Mary Bonhag, accompanied by Evan Premo on the double bass. It's lyrics spoke of the ebbing of love like an ocean tide, and it took all of my will to contain my tears. The low strings are the ones that got me, rustling loose grave emotions that seemed to have settled inside me, lightening them up.

I was so happy to have dropped in. Music is the best thing for loosening tension and unwinding abstract notes... when words can't express all of the complexities that color our experiences, these chords and harmonies can.