Late Night [deep] Musician Ramblings...

As a musicians, we deal with the structural but also the abstract. It is often possible to describe the structure of music, but more difficult to describe how to facilitate it in your playing, or how you should bring out that structure to your audience.

Sometimes, the colors or tone of the music evoke the weirdest things out of you if you let them. In a studio class, my piano professor was talking about the composer Alexander Scriabin, and how he saw literal colors and hues when music was in different key signatures.

Something like this happened to me the other day.

I was sitting in my practice room, trying to memorize Brahm's op. 118, no. 2- Intermezzo. The middle section contains a rhythmic and intense 3-against-2 with f# minor chords. Being very distracted that day, my mind began to wander as my fingers kept playing. My mind echoed the intensity of the musical passage.

Then, there was a very disturbing [dream?... except I wouldn't call it that because I was awake]:

I pictured myself taking a break in the music school lobby and suddenly (don't ask me why- I blame the music...) a gun man comes in and starts pointing his gun at all the students in the lobby. Everybody screamed and ducked behind the couches and tables. Silently, the man walked through the room. He called out "do any of you guys call yourselves Christian? If you do, stand out and make yourself known!" I stood up, with the expectation that I would be shot point blank, on the spot. But for some unexplainable reason, the gun man didn't shoot me. Instead, he tried to make me do something horrible. He said "I want you to call out another Christian and shoot him for me." He handed me the gun, but in my horror I couldn't do it. He was about to take the gun and shoot me himself, but one of my close Christian friends also in the room (he's not a even a music major) jumped up from a table and tried to trip the gunman as he reached for the gun in my hand. Unfortunately, the gunman had already grabbed the gun from my hand and shot my friend. The next thing I remember is that I was standing over my friend's body, helpless. And then the whole scene ended.

Shocking, isn't it? I guess f# minor is the key of death...

The weirdest thing was- this wasn't even a dream, it was something that popped into my mind when I was really deep into the music. Maybe I was hallucinating?

Weird? yeah. But did it make me think? yeah.

After my practice session, I took a lot of time to ponder what had just happened.

I remembered back a few years ago where this actually happened at a school.

I remembered my pastor's sunday school lesson on the little girl who had stood up for Christ in an underground church and was shot by soldiers when they were discovered.

I remembered all the stories and books I read on Eric Liddell, the famous track runner, as a child and how he chose to stay in a prison camp rather than give his place to another. Or how he chose not to run on a Sunday during the Olympics because he placed God and church first in his life.

If I were really in that sort of situation, would I honestly be able to stand up and say "Yes, I'm a Christian and I'm not ashamed of it."
Honestly speaking, I believe I would have to say "no." Which is sad.
How come that people in other religions are willing to die for their faith, but I don't even seem to have enough motivation to do my devotions, let alone stand up to die for my faith?

And about Christ as the focus of our daily lives-- think about it! If it were not for Christ, we would still be dead. Is that not something to think about every single day we are living? And yet we forget so easily like the cross has absolutely no meaning except when we are talking to our Christian friends or at church on Sundays.

A lot to think about, a lot to ponder. But for something this significant, how can one not ponder?


keep thinking,

-KKZ