Me as Musician in Tune with Nature: The Hour Hand

I knew as a teenage composer that Ludwig van Beethoven was a favorite on a deeper level than music ... on music I will never hold a candle to him, but I was not intimidated by that because I knew that he also loved to take his walks and composed much of his music in the peace of nature, taking refuge from the busyness and troubles of Vienna, Austria.

My home city, San Francisco, CA, has in common with Vienna a vast mix of cultures and deep troubles ... but also has planners who prioritized parks. So from a late teenager I found refuge in those parks. I remember that when walking on warm days surrounded by nature's beauty, I would hear the middle movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony playing from memory ...

... and to this day A flat is the key of warm days outdoors for me (although D is sunshine generally).

This year, Bruckner's "Benedictus" from his F minor Mass added for me the beautiful sound of scented summer breezes blowing gently through the trees ... and having time to simply slow down, sit, and enjoy them.

... and Berg's "Sommertage" gave me the height and depth of understanding of the gift such days are, blowing gently out of Blue Eternity...

... and because this is the case, my world is blessed ...

To me, all the time spent far from the sound of cars and crowds and the world's demands comes from and returns to music. Of course I have composed much music of my own inspired while being out walking around...

... and my past has drawers and drawers of scored music from my teens and twenties. But I am in an input mode now as a musician ... still not composing as much, but still hearing the music of others I encounter that reminds me of my walks, still considering all that is played and said across the centuries about life itself before and after and in communion with my walks ... my walks, my moving meditations on life and music, away from the world.

Me as Photographer: The Minute Hand

Of course, when I was in my middle teens, I did not have a cell phone, and the one time I was given a camera, my folks did not understand why I was snapping photos not of the people I was meeting, but the flowers, trees, and landscapes. Culturally as an African American, I understand now with mature years that the way we traditionally have used photography is to resist a dominant culture that denies our achievements, accomplishments, and humanity -- so, every photographer is considered a documentarian of our existence. So, I didn't get another camera with film, ever ... but when I discovered cell phones have cameras, I went right back to doing what I was doing.

When I got better at that, and got a better phone, then on came the landscapes as well ... after 20 years, I've gotten a bit of a hang of it ...

... and now, minute by minute, I can document the beauty that walks hand in hand with music for me.

There was another denial ... in college I desired to take an interdisciplinary master's degree, but the program was shuttered the year before I could get there. This hurt me to my heart, because although I certainly picked the right major -- journalism, which sits in mass communication as a professional form of storytelling -- I knew I was never meant to be pigeonholed. I can hear music old and new in every day, and compose, take photos, make fractal art, and write from there -- I am an interdisciplinary creative, and college simply was not able to accommodate me. Hive was, and specifically ...

Me as Perennial Writer as Storyteller: The Second Hand

Where I am writing right now is not "Q-Inspired Music," but "Q-Inspired by Music." I read that, when discovering the community, as "Tell us the stories here inspired by the music you love." Now you can find me elsewhere on Hive doing pure storytelling in the Freewriters community to the daily prompt there, and in Alien Art Hive doing my storytelling in concert with my fractal art ... but at last in Q-Inspired I have been able to bring my photography, my music, my favorite music (and musicians), and my both non-fiction and fiction chops together and tell the kind of rich, deep, interdisciplinary stories I was trying to get at all the way back in my twenties ... and even into my teens, hearing Beethoven and my own music in my head and also thinking there of my life as it relates to all things in eternity past, the present, and eternity future.

Now, if you read me across Hive, you will find that I write about the same themes in a thousand different ways ... in music if you give me a theme and I have time, I can also do this in music if I am in output mode ... but I am in output mode as a storyteller for now ... not as much composing, but in Q-Inspired, the distinction does not matter as much, because just like if I were physically on a walk, I might think of someone else's music or my own ... I have scored several little pieces that came about as I was working on my weekly post here in the past year. There is no need to be pigeonholed here ... so as the second hand continually moves, so does my writing a story ... as the minute hand puts another layer of a point in time on, so does my photography, and as the greatest unit of time is the hour, overlaying all of it is my hearing music in nature and nature in music.

This is the how the clock ticks in Q-Inspired for me -- where I have room enough to be what my home culture and college were not flexible enough for me to allow me to be.