The Magician & The Musician

“There are times when the truth can only show you an illusion.” 
(Lionel Suggs)

Music is the purest form of magic. Magic is the deepest essence of music. The romance between the two is legendary. While music is our refuge, magic becomes our resurrection. There is no flow sleeker than music and no law stronger than magic. Both have survived the rise and decline of countless civilizations… both are unbound by time and space, or atoms and cells… both defining life and existence, uniquely and fervently.

The truest lie is magic, the loudest silence is music. A magician and a musician, both estranged by destiny and separated by distance, feel connected to each other through the invocation of their respective spells – magic and music. A series of Haikus and two cinematically emotive instrumentals attempting to create such an atmosphere of invocation:

Whispers at Moonrise

“Heaven, envious of our joys, is waxen pale;
And when we whisper, then the stars fall down
To be partakers of our honey talk.”
(Christopher Marlowe, Dido, Queen of Carthage)

Some words are never spoken, but felt. Some feelings are never sensed, until stirred.

One cannot measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange, but by the number of whispers they share. If whispers were the lyrics, silence was the music… making time spent together a melody that could be replayed over and over without getting stale.

The heart is not an organ, but a whisper in your soul. Two lovers, from two different realms of time, exchange glimpses of each other, through silent songs at every moonrise. A series of Haikus and two soulful tunes fictionalising a surreal romance:

A Feeling Rare

“Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love.
The real miracle is the love that inspires them.” 
(Marie Lloyd)

Miracle. Serendipity. Divine intervention. These often define the willingness to see the common in an uncommon way. Most people’s lives are a series of little miracles – strange coincidences which spring from uncontrollable impulses and give rise to incomprehensible dreams. We spend a lot of time pretending that we are normal, but underneath the surface each one of us knows that he or she is unique. Each one of us experiences miracles of some form, but we don’t realize when we do – miracles of healing, an answered prayer, an unexpected happy ending. Each comes quietly and simply, on tiptoe… so we hardly get to perceive its occurrence.

In fact, miracles are everyday things. Not only the sudden, great good fortune, wafting in on a new wind from the sky. They are almost routine, yet miracles just the same. Every time something hard becomes easier; every time we find a solution which until last week was non-existent; every time a kindness falls as softly as the dew, or someone we love who was unwell gets better; every time a blessing comes, not with trumpet and fanfare, but silently, at night… we have witnessed a miracle.

To love someone is to see a miracle invisible to others. This verse is a reflection of one such moment of serendipity when love decided to work in unknown ways:

Inner Insights

“Alice came to a fork in the road. ‘Which road do I take?’ she asked.
‘Where do you want to go?’ responded the Cheshire Cat.
‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered.
‘Then,’ said the Cat, ‘it doesn’t matter.’” 

(Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)

Life has no rules.  It can be a complicated and bitter journey, or it can be a happy rewarding one with simple answers. Over the years I have come to believe that life is about choices. And the choices you make eventually shape your day, shape your views, shape your experiences, shape your thoughts… and shape your life.

There are some life choices over which you have no control or which others will make for you – like when and where you are born, the family you are born to, your life during childhood, the school you went to, etc. etc. etc. Beyond that, there are several other important choices that you make in life. And those choices define you.

Heroes are made by the paths they choose, not the powers they are graced with. If you believe it is a world of choice, you regard your life as a product of your own decisions. If you believe in destiny, you suspect there are greater forces defining your life’s story. Even if we are a part of some grand master plan, our unique journey has more personal meaning when we choose it for ourselves.

Desires dictate our priorities, priorities shape our choices, and choices determine our actions. We don’t get to choose what is true. We only get to choose what we do about it. At the end of the day, the questions we ask of ourselves determine the type of people that we will become.

Life is a test.  It was designed to be so. Few lines conjured up as I meandered into the world of choices that define our lives… or rather, we let them define our lives: