September 25, 2024
Last night, after our customary
couple of hours of television viewing was done, as usual, we separated and moved
on to our computers. David’s is in the living room, in a corner where he’s made
himself an office. Mine, is in my actual office. One door and about fifteen
steps separate us.
This is a routine that is so
us. We’ve never had to live in each other’s pockets, as it were.
We’ve developed a good rhythm
that suits us both since he retired nearly seven years ago. Throughout the day,
we can be found most often, each of us at our keyboards. I spend my mornings at
mine, working on my writing—or trying to. Focus is sometimes a problem for me
lately, and I have no idea why that is. But I do my best, between when I finish
my devotionals—along with most of my first and only fully caffeinated coffee of
the day—and that moment when I know I must go into the living room and get my
legs up.
My legs go up as I sit in my
recliner, a blanket on me to keep either the draft of the a/c or the draft of
warmer air from the furnace, off those legs. Drafts, of whatever temperature,
give my arthritis merry hell. Elevating my legs for a while seems to help a
great deal. This “rest” usually lasts a couple hours, and that’s the first time
in the day David and I turn on the television.
I perform so many different
tasks at my keyboard. Personal, promotional, financial. Some are necessary and
some, inevitably, are not. However, I do resist going to YouTube until near the
very end of my day, after our shared evening time, and as I’m having fond
thoughts of my bed. Just before I begin to shut everything down, I’ll take what
I intend to be only a few minutes but of course, often becomes a half hour or
more, “sliding down the rabbit holes” on that very interesting site.
Sometimes I am surprised and
enriched by what I discover. Last night was just such a time. There were a
couple of video clips from a documentary, “David Foster: Off the Record,” that
was produced in 2019. The clips focused
on the first meetings between the composer/producer and Josh Groban, and also
with his fellow Canadian, Celine Dion (although she is also in the video
featuring Groban).
The first video recounted the
time in New York and on the eve of the Grammys when Foster called a 17-year-old
Groban, who had been referred by a friend, asking him to come to the theater to
rehearse The Prayer with Celine Dion—Josh was to sing in place of Andrea
Bocelli, who had been held up arriving in the city. The second focused on
Celine’s first meeting with Foster, and the recording of “All by Myself” – and
that glorious and wonderful, impossibly high note.
Celine Dion said words to the
effect that David Foster writes music that will last forever.
As the music played, the
camera focused on Foster, and it was clear that he had been transported by the
music back to that moment in time. Eyes closed; an air of reverence and peace settled
upon him. I understood that expression and could almost feel the sense of
wonder and accomplishment that an artist experiences when what had been but a concept
born from creative talent becomes a reality.
Those are the kinds of moments
that we who are artistic cherish. They are not everyday occurrences. Those
moments that are mystical, magical, are truly rare. I’ve never experienced such
a fulsome epiphany as I saw on my screen last night, but I’ve had a handful of moments
that have come close.
Some people—and I pity them—believe
that life, that jobs, that relationships should be all rainbows and unicorns
and magic, all of the time. And I pity them because they don’t
understand that those times, in whatever endeavor, both artistic and living,
are not and can never be the norm. I pity them because they doom themselves to live
in an eternal disappointment that is of their own making.
The rarity of the truly
wondrous, the truly joyous, and blissfully happy is what makes them special.
Their rarity shows us what can be and gives us the hope and the strength to
carry on, knowing that if we work hard, and if we are lucky, we will also
become blessed with such moments—and I promise you, that just as they are few
and far between, they are so much more.
They are real. And they are
the absolute signs and acknowledgements that we need that tell us that we’re on
the right path. We are learning. We are growing. We are becoming.
Love,
Morgan
https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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