Cluin, that's beautiful - thank you! Hey, I think I've had a real "Friend" or two after all, then ...

Here's a bit of musically inspiritational prose from Fritz Kreisler. I've been blessed with experiences like the one he describes a few times -- when this mysterious change happens in the midst of playing a well-known and loved piece (on a well-mastered instrument, so technique etc is not a distraction). Rather than me playing the music, it feels like the Music somehow starts "playing me", and the sounds coming through my hands seem to swell up with new depth and meaning and majesty;

COMMUNION

Some of the loftiest aspirations of the human soul are reserved to those who have the great gift of musical expression, for they thereby lift themselves out of a material world and enter a spiritual one ...

Whether I play in public in the midst of thousands or in the privacy of my own room, I forget everything except my music ... I am lifted out of the material world and come in touch with another, a holier world - as if some Hand other than mine were directing the bow over the strings.