"If music be the food of love, play on." William Shakespeare

A question for you all. Which of the following am I going to play this evening at my home?

Trumpet, Clarinet, Piano, Accordion, French Horn, Flute, or Xylophone. One of these musical instruments is more familiar to me than the others. I started learning how to play this instrument in 4th or 5th grade. Reggie Everett may remember when better than I do because he played the same at about the same time.

If you guessed (or already knew) the accordion you would be correct. I really wanted to play a horn but my pediatrician did not think it wise since asthma had become a part of my life and my parents agreed with him that I should not even try. My little brother had already expressed an interest in the piano so I ruled that idea out pretty quickly. Reggie showed me the accordion that he had just started learning to play and I was hooked. It looked fun, and I learned that it was a lot of fun to play. It also is a wind instrument though you deliver the air through the movement of bellows rather than from your own lungs.

They say that confession is good for the soul; so a little confessing is needed here. I worked hard at learning how to play for the first 2 or 3 years and then kind of just went through the motions with this instrument. I had discovered a talent for singing that required a lot less effort and was a lot sexier than strapping an accordion onto your chest (I had also reached an age when that was important). There must be places where this musical instrument is appreciated, but where I lived then and now it is not.

"One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain." (Bob Marley)

By the time my voice began changing I had kind of backed off from playing the accordion each day. I think I probably practiced on the day after my weekly lesson and maybe on the day before the following lesson. I know I was singing every day. In my bedroom, in the basement, in school (choir), in the back yard, in the car, anywhere music could be heard I was singing. By the time I was 14 I had pretty well stopped playing the accordion. I do, on occasion, pick it up and play some of those long forgotten, but easy to play with music in front of me, songs learned in my youth. My biggest regret musically is that I allowed the fact that my brother played the piano keep me from learning. I do sit at the piano from time to time and bang out a Hymn. But not well. Perhaps my time to learn is yet to come.

I still sing in the car, in church, and occasionally in my home. But, again, not as often or as much as in the days of youth. That needs to change. My children and grand children need to hear my voice and learn to have music as a very large part of their lives. Oh, their parents sing to them and with them so I know they have music in their daily example. Some of them even have parents who sing professionally so they hear music in their homes all the time. They even get to see and hear their parents on stage in and around Nashville, TN from time to time. But they still need to hear my voice and the emotion that it expresses regarding life. I'll keep working on that.

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent" (Victor Hugo).

A great truth.

I know for me emotion flows much more easily through musical expression than in any other way.

Thanks for checking in. More to come soon. See you then.