There is nothing more infectious than a child’s earnest smile.
If, by pure chance, something you have said or done somehow contributed to such a smile, the resulting bliss is exponentially magnified tenfold.
Yesterday, one of my younger music students (I’ll tell you her age at the end of this story) was sitting waiting for me in the foyer and as I came up from the studio with my previous student. I noticed immediately that she looked rather sad and preoccupied. This was not her typical look, which is normally something more like “I can’t wait to get downstairs and start playing and singing!!!!”
She quickly blurted out:”Cathy, you know that song we were writing last week? I can’t remember how it goes – at all.” Her face was painted with a look comparable to having lost something so special that the idea of it possibly never being found would be absolutely heartbreaking.
I frequently write music with some of my students, I enjoy that aspect of teaching immensely. So, at that moment I was frantically thinking, “Oh god, will I even remember that song?” How might I isolate its tiny burgeoning bud of newness from the stream of musical stems, thorns and petals amongst other assorted lyrical debris floating around in my mind on a constant basis?
I could feel her panic as she hung on my reaction to her words. Her eyes gripped mine with an almost tangible combination of fear and eager wishfulness, hoping beyond hope, that I would somehow miraculously remember what we’d crafted together more than a week earlier.
We went downstairs. She pulled out the handwritten paper, with the song’s framework of words, verses, chorus and a bridge along with the bright red markings of assorted chords scrawled across both sides of the white page. She sat quietly, tuning her guitar nervously while I looked at the song on the white page.
It’s funny how sometimes it only takes a flicker of something to open the door of the subconscious mind and a flow of all that you thought might be lost, returns. There was one particular line and lilting manner in which the words were expressed in her song that I’d really liked when we worked on it, and suddenly I had a surreal sense I might be able to bring it back to life again.
I picked up my guitar, and started playing and singing the chorus as though time had stood still since last week’s lesson. I remembered it perfectly. Every little inflection of the vocals, every tiny nuance and guitar riff we’d put together in our 30 minutes of creative work together.
To say the look of absolute delight on her small face was one that I could ever have anticipated in my mind’s eye, would be an injustice to that moment in time. She was glowing and radiant with gleeful exuberance at the knowledge that something she’d loved so very much was not lost forever, after all.
I immediately felt my eyes well up with tears of joy at the fact that I’d almost magically sifted through my mind’s vast musical garden archives to make her look just THAT happy. I was almost as excited as she was in that moment.
It’s a great tune by the way. She’s only 9 years old and this is her 4th year of lessons with me. She started writing her own songs when she was only 7. I have no doubt one day she’ll be something special. Actually, she already is. Her song is called Time Line. I suspect it will be one of many from this young artist in the years to come.
Knowing I can make another human being feel that happy is the best joy I could ever hope to achieve as I attempt to share my passion for music to the many students I teach. It is truly a gift, to myself, that I am able to do what I do.
That pure look of joy on her little face will be indelibly etched in my mind, forever. Now if I could just remember all the lyrics to the songs I sing, that would be terrific! 🙂
  
  
  