Playing Music. Playing my Bike. True Harmony from Two wheels

Over the weekend I went to see my good friend and creative inspiration Deborah Henson Conant do her musical magic. She plays the harp, which may bring to mind a woman sitting peacefully and delicately strumming an instrument half her size. Deborah, the world’s foremost electric harpist, thrusts this image out of the universe and back again. She not only plays the harp, she rocks it, dances with it and bounces all over stage with her guitar sized, carbon fiber harp. Deborah not only redefines what harp playing is, but the passion and physicality of her performance fires up the stage and is mesmerizing. As I watched her move and feel her love for what she does fly across the stage, I cannot help but make the parallels of playing an instrument and riding my bicycle. Although I have no audience and no music emerges from my two-wheeled friend, I experience the same rhythmic and wonderful connection with my bicycle as a musician does while in the zone of their music playing.

While the bicycle can be reduced as a recreational machine, a means by which an athlete can reach a high level of physical performance and fitness,  for me the bicycle  has always meant much more. I  personally have always likened (and craved) my rides as my special time to make physical and mental music. Although the bicycle makes lovely sounds…the spinning of the wheels, the clicking of the pedals, the changing of the gears–it is not the mechanical music of the actual bicycle that turns me on.   Like the feeling of strumming a guitar or the beating of a drum, the varied rhythmic sensations I create by dancing and pushing on the pedals,  rocking the handlebars from side to side, goes right to my head and like a drug,  I am on fire.  I quickly begin to see the world (and myself) differently. Motion becomes meditation and I am transformed into a trance-like state where everything is right and good in the world.  The landscape explodes like a dream. I suddenly see better and am creating paintings out of open fields, gnarly trees, sparkling lakes, stone walls and puffy clouds. With each stroke of the pedal I paint the landscape as it blurs before my eyes. My ears open up and I begin to let the noise in my brain peacefully flow in and out while other magical sounds and thoughts take over my body. Climbing, I calm down and focus on getting the notes right. Descending,  I strum hard,  belt out the chorus and my singing soul soars. I stand on my pedals and gaze at the sky. Colors intensify.  My entire body is awake. The air streams through me. I am electric. I am flying.

I have always fantasized about playing an instrument, to experience what I believe is one of the ultimate human experiences–the simultaneous transformation and connection of the musician and the audience, alas I will have to settle on soothing my own soul with my tool wheeled instrument.

Although I get no applause and no real music emerges, each time I do hear the applause of my own heart, that with every pedal stroke is uplifted, empowered, overjoyed and always transformed. There is true, deep harmony, as the world and I become one.

 

 

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