This morning I woke up in existential angst. I tried to meditate but could only muster 20 minutes before giving up. That gave me extra time to get to work but was late anyway.

As the day went on, I wondered if this Poseur to Composer project will be of worth to anyone but myself. It's not the first time. As a Christian, I try to keep an eternal perspective, to make a positive contribution in the world, but I've been going through a faith crisis. My late nights and frantic days have only exacerbated my feelings of negativity and hopelessness.

Then at last work break I happened to read the far-out yet edifying Grammy speech by Ornette Coleman, iconoclast and founder of Free Jazz. Coleman had just won the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Here it is:

It is really very, very real to be here tonight, in relationship to life and death and I’m sure they both love each other.

I really don’t have any present thoughts about why I’m standing here other than trying to figure out something to say that could be useful to someone that believes.

One of the things I am experiencing is very important and that is: You don’t have to die to kill and you don’t have to kill to die. And above all, nothing exists that is not in the form of life because life is eternal with or without people so we are grateful for life to be here at this very moment.

For myself, I’d rather be human than to be dead. And I would also die to be human. So you can’t die, you can’t die to be neither one, regardless of what you say or think so that’s why I believe that music itself is eternal in relationship to sound, meaning, intelligence…all the things that have to have something to do with being alive because you were born and because someone else made it possible for you to be here, which we call our parents etc. etc.

For me, the most eternal thing is that I would like to live until I learn what it is and what it isn’t…that is, how do we kill death since it kills everything?

And it’s hard to realize that being in the human form is not as easy as wondering what is going to happen to you even if you do know what it is and it doesn’t depend on if you know what is going to happen to you.

No one can know anything that life creates since no one is life itself. And it’s obvious, at least I believe, it’s obvious the one reason why we as human beings get there and do things that seem to be valuable to us in relationship to intelligence… uh, what is it called…creativity and love and all the things that have to do with waking up every morning believing it’s going to be a better day today or tomorrow and yet at the same time death, life, sadness, anger, fear, all of those things are present at the same time as we are living and breathing.

It is really, really eternal, this that we are constantly being created as human beings to know that exists and it’s really, really unbelievable to know that nothing that’s alive can die unless it’s been killed. So what we should try to realize is to remove that part of what it is so that whatever we are, life is all there is and I thank you very much.

In the same way Coleman and his cohorts disperses sounds ("unstructured" might be the right word), he says in his speech that his music will live on forever. He reminds us that music and creativity is eternal. It's part of the human condition; essential to human existence. It's worth waking up for, suffering for, because it endures.

Meditation Time bookstanding today: 20 minutes Quality of meditation (out of 10): 4

Practice Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 10 minutes Quality of practice (out of 10): 4